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I have a small family farm - we raise pigs and chickens on pasture ( and we would never dream of using antibiotics on an animal that wasn't sick). Farms like the ones you described are propped up by subsidies that allow the farm to ignore the true costs of their operation. If that farm charged prices based on the true costs, I could more easily compete. Clearly there are additional factors, but it's hard enough to sell someone on quality or the ethics of how your animals are raised when the competitions prices are lowered by a big check from the taxpayers. To make matters worse, things like this http://nonais.org/2010/09/23/s510-depredation/ and this http://nonais.org/but-what-is-nais/ certainly don't help small farms, but are indicative of how the federal government approaches this subject - send more money to big farms, make it harder for the small ones. I'm not saying government has no place in food safety, but you appear to be pinning problems on what you perceive as 'unabashed capitalism' and that just isn't the case.

I have a small family farm - we raise pigs and chickens on pasture ( and we would never dream of using antibiotics on an animal that wasn't sick). Farms like the ones you described are propped up by subsidies that allow the farm to ignore the true costs of their operation. If that farm charged prices based on the true costs, I could more easily compete. Clearly there are additional factors, but it's hard enough to sell someone on quality or the ethics of how your animals are raised when the competitions prices are lowered by a big check from the taxpayers. To make matters worse, things like this http://nonais.org/2010/09/23/s510-depredation/ and this http://nonais.org/but-what-is-nais/ certainly don't help small farms, but are indicative of how the federal government approaches this subject - send more money to big farms, make it harder for the small ones. I'm not saying government has no place in food safety, but you appear to be pinning problems on what you perceive as 'unabashed capitalism' and that just isn't the case.

"Seriously, as a Canadian this disgusts me. The EU, the US..."

Hey! Don't blame US! We're getting fucked over too by our government, the international corporations and the new world leaders. Just say http://nonais.org/ if you don't get it.

Remember that the British government finally admitted that they were the ones who released Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD), not once, but twice, into the wild and then killed over 6,000,000 healthy animals in their burnt ground policy? How comforting that our government is on top of things, too. Not. Visit http://nonais.org/ [nonais.org] and see what this means. Our government would do the same for us...

but the guy who sells me my eggs and has only a dozen chickens probably isn't going to pony up the $500

And here is the problem! I sympathize with exactly this statement because it's why I don't sell eggs. You want freshly laid eggs? Ask me and I'll just give them to you because the regulatory compliance overhead of selling them isn't worth it to me to make a few bucks. Even though it would be nice to break even on the cost of feed & materials.

As far as NAIS, I haven't been keeping track recently. I got sick enough reading the original drafts! We have horses and chickens. I just gave a rooster away to someone who wanted to breed chickens. Under the full NAIS, I would be expected to record the movement of that animal, even though it's going to a farm where it will probably stay until it dies.

Under NAIS, if my wife decides to go for a quick after-dinner ride to the end of the road (about 3-4 miles round trip), she is required to file an animal movement document with the USDA because the horse left our property. For a fscking joy ride down the road! Same goes if it's a trail ride, except then you also have to report the ID numbers of the horses your horse was in company with. This shit is so stupid it's insane. Whatever good intentions they may have had are totally lost in the stupidity of the implementation!

I can only hope they come to their senses before NAIS is fully implemented. Go visit these guys: http://www.nonais.org/

Health and exercise fight this to a large degree. Both physical and mental exercise. This is much like people saying their bodies get weaker as they age. Not me. I am 46 years old and I am as strong or stronger than I have ever been. Every day I push both my body and my mind to work hard. Then I rest both of them. I also eat right and all of that good stuff. It really does make a difference. If you want strong muscles you work out. If you want a strong brain, work it. This is part of why I chose what I do. I farm. It is very mentally and physically invigorating. I'm outdoors much of the day. There are always new challenges. I also program, write, draw, take photos and do other interesting things. Don't get in a rut.
Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/
http://hollygraphicart.com/
http://nonais.org/

I am extremely good at math and sciences. People are a bit more of a mystery. I used my skills to develop a number of inventions (some of which you may well use). I also farm, raising pastured pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks and geese. It's a great life and my skills at math & science come in very handy giving me a deep understanding of things on the farm including mechanical, biological, chemistry, physics, statistics, etc. I love it. Our kids got my math and science skills plus my wife's people skills. What a deal. Cheers -Walter Sugar Mountain Farm in the mountains of Vermont http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/ http://hollygraphicart.com/ http://nonais.org/

When we bought our farm in the early '90s there was no phone. We face wrong for satellite and there are mountains in the way. Cellular connections aren't an option either. The first winter here I laid a mile and a half of twelve pair UG cable inside 1" diameter black plastic water line on the surface of the ground from the last pole (POTS NID) to my house. That has worked fine for sixteen years. I laid twelve pairs because when DSL or ISDN became available I wanted to have the capacity. We now have DSL (aDSL for those who care) although we are far beyond the official range of the circuit. The reality is it works much further than they say and we get excellent speed. So, if you can lay your own cable over the necessary distance you may well be able to get broadband.

Another alternative is to install your own WiFi system with a long distance extender from the nearest NID where DSL is available. A pair of devices like http://cellamericas.com/ASU24005g-802.11g-wifi-access-point-wifi-repeater-wifi-bridge-outdoor-wifi-pr-16309.html may do the trick for you. This is probably what I'm going to replace my cable with because we get a lot of lightning here due to the copper vein in the mountains and over the decades the EMPs have blasted many of our wire pairs. I've found the EMPs don't harm the WiFi.

You're confusing two different programs. COOL is the Country of Origin Labeling and that is a good program. It would be good to know that food is coming in to our country from other countries. Remember all the recent fiascos with toxic Chinese toothpaste, fish and other items. NAIS is the National Animal Identification System which would make it so that if you do not register your home, tag your individual animals and report to the government all their movements and interactions then you would be fined and could lose your right to own and raise livestock. NAIS is an infringement of our basic rights to raise our own food and an infringement on our rights to traditional farming. More over NAIS is heavily biased towards the big factory farms that get to use one Group ID and don't have to do tagging. NAIS is designed to first and formost help the meat exporters using your and my tax dollars. NAIS benefits big business and hurts small farmers and homesteaders raising their own meat. NAIS represents no benefit to the small farmers or homesteaders. NAIS also does not benefit consumers. COOL is good. NAIS is bad. Don't confuse the two. Cheers -Walter Sugar Mountain Farm in the mountains of Vermont http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/ http://hollygraphicart.com/ http://nonais.org/

It isn't just the money. We are losing our basic Constitutional rights. The federal government in particular but also some states are gradually chipping away at our rights and freedoms, a little bit each year. REAL ID is one example. The USDA's National Animal Identification System (NAIS) is another example which takes away our traditional rights to own, raise, transport and sell livestock.

I already did move to the woods. No TV. No cable. No radio. No billboards. Few people. The internet's fine - surf with plugins and Java turned off and use an ad killer on the browser. Email program kills the spam. Life is good. Cheers -Walter Sugar Mountain Farm in the mountains of Vermont http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/ http://hollygraphicart.com/ http://nonais.org/

I love the idea of a handheld Mac, ideally one that will run not just iPhone apps but also all of my MacOSX, MacClassic and Palm applications - there are emulations for Palm on Mac. I want something that has enough storage that it can be kept synced with my PowerBook and act as a backup for my family's home folders so I need at least 8GB of storage for the five of us in addition to application space, music, etc. A 20GB device would be good to start with. Hopefully the iPhone, in one of its soon to be released generations, will be that iPal... Cheers -Walter Sugar Mountain Farm in the mountains of Vermont http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/ http://hollygraphicart.com/ http://nonais.org/

Don't worry, they've got a plan. Or several actually:

REAL ID - http://realnightmare.org/
NAIS - See http://nonais.org/

There is a lot more to it than the 4 'benefits' you listed
and none of them are beneficial to small farmers, consumers, etc.

We have had an internal home server for since the early 1990's. I don't trust to to have our server needs fulfilled by some outside source for security reasons and the DSL pipe is really too small to waste bandwidth on this. Our internal network is orders of magnitude faster and more secure. I've never thought much of Apple's .Mac or other similar systems. Why would I ever trust them with my data when we read of almost daily security breaches, even at the departments of Homeland Security is losing people's data left and right. See this article.

An interesting comparison for this and other explanations would be are the bees being killed off in pockets like our valley. We have no cell phone reception, no radio, no TV due to the shielding of the mountains. There is no pesticide or herbicide spraying. I kept bees for 25 years but am not doing so right now so I can't provide data but it would be interesting to know if isolated areas have the colony collapse problem or not. Different types of isolations would add up to good info. Cheers -Walter Sugar Mountain Farm in the mountains of Vermont http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/ http://hollygraphicart.com/ http://nonais.org/

The loss of freedoms is being brought to you by BOTH the Republicans and the Democrats. We need a regime change in a most desperate sort of way. Both parties are in the pockets of big business who wants to capture all of your dollars. REAL ID and NAIS are too other examples. If you don't know about them, learn about them and stop them. http://nonais.org/ http://www.realnightmare.org/

Don't forget the RFID tagged world that we are heading into. Companies such as Wall-Mart and several government agencies have been pushing hard to add RFID spychips to everything that we purchase. Soon we will be wearing RFID tagged clothing and shoes. Our wallets will have RFID tags in our charge cards and passports. We will be driving around in cars with RFID tags in the tires and elsewhere.

Each and every RFID tag will have a unique serial number and we will secretly be scanned when entering stores. Upon checking out our RFID tagged items we will show them our shoppers discount card and pay by charge card where our personal information will be updated in various computer databases. Who knows what personal information will then eventually be shared with credit agencies, advertisers and the governemnt.

As we drive around the country hidden scanners in highways will secretly log our movements at key points. And of course all the young people proudly carry their cell phones everywhere. I have heard that cell phones regularly transmit which cell tower they are closest to even when they are turned off. Only removing the battery or perhaps placing it in a Faraday cage would stop that.

If I understand correctly the USDA wants animal ID for all animals in micro-farms for every sheep, chicken, goat or other animal. That would most likely involve using RFID Tags to track your food. Perhaps they are afraid that that someone could actually buy their food from somewhere in cash without big brother having a record. There is an organization called NoNAIS that is opposed to those proposed rules.

Marketing researchers and the police will be able to inventory the contents of our garbage cans with hand held scanners without even opening the lid.

And if they can't get to the humans directly with RFID, they'll get to 'em through the back way, by starting with all the domesticated animals (http://usda.gov/nais/). Either way, you will be numbered, you will be cataloged, you will be tracked, and you will show your papers. Ineffectiveness notwithstanding, and inevitable ID theft be damned, to say nothing of basic liberty. The Pentagon's been hacked, the VA's been hacked, the credit companies have been hacked, the CIA can't keep track of all their laptops, etc., "But this time, we'll get it right!"
Feh. You're welcome to your handbasket, if you like, but leave me out of it, thanks...

http://nonais.org/
http://libertyark.net/
http://newswithviews.com/Stuter/stuter91.htm

This has probably been posted already, but it's good...
http://news.com.com/Do+we+need+a+national+ID+card/ 2010-1029_3-6075218.html

Want more? Pay attention to Rep. Ron Paul...
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2006/tst052906.ht m

Why can't government just leave me alone? Damn the databases, bring on those FreeStaters. I just hope it's not too late...

How does this "protect the food supply"?? Well, it doesn't... Supposedly it protects from "Mad Cow Disease", except that's been proved to be caused by cows being fed parts of other cows. For the thousands of people whose livestock doesn't get within 5 miles of a cow, mad or sane, it's nothing more than yet another tax. And that includes 90-year-old grandmothers living in apartment blocks with pet parakeets or canaries.