Resources

We endeavor to make available resources that will help citizens and organizations to understand the enormous potential impact of the National Animal Identification System - a system that, if fully implemented, will change the very nature of animal ownership. For those who perceive NAIS to be a threat to traditional farming and rural ways of life, the first step in analyzing or confronting NAIS is to be fully prepared with knowledge of the program.

USDA Announces August 3, 2009 Deadline for Comments Related to NAIS Listening Sessions. PDF

Cost-Benefit Analysis for NAIS (PDF) (released Apr. 29, 2009 but dated Jan. 14,2009)

I. NAIS Fact Sheet (PDF)
This is a convenient one-page summary of the reasons underlying NAIS, the forces behind NAIS, and the harms NAIS will cause to traditional agriculture. You may distribute electronic or printed copies of the NAIS Fact Sheet without further permission, so long as no changes are made to the document. The Fact Sheet omits any citations to sources in the interest of brevity. If you need more detailed information with citations to sources, please see the articles we have posted. Taken together, the articles provide a background of the development of the NAIS program over the past several years. Please contact us for permission in writing before distributing any copies of the articles.

II. NAIS Timeline (PDF)
The Timeline is a summary of the major steps in the development of NAIS at the federal level. Note that certain states (e.g., Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Texas) have made some aspects of NAIS mandatory; the status of NAIS in particular states is not reflected in this Timeline. As with the Fact Sheet, you may distribute electronic or printed copies of the NAIS Timeline without further permission, so long as no changes are made to the document.

III. Government Documents on NAIS
Students and critics of NAIS will also wish to read and understand the USDA NAIS program documents; these documents are presented here for convenience of access. (USDA has removed some of these documents, e.g., the 2005 Draft Strategic Plan and the April 2006 Implementation Plan, from its website.) Summaries and explanations of the USDA documents are also available in some of the posted articles.

2005 USDA Draft Strategic Plan and 2005 USDA Draft Program Standards

• 2005 USDA Draft Strategic Plan (PDF)
• 2005 USDA Draft Program Standards (PDF)

• premises ID (a huge federal database of every property where anyone keeps any "livestock")
• individual animal ID (usually with Radio Frequency Identification eartags or implanted microchips) and
• animal tracking (every animal owner has to report all animal movements and changes in status to a private database which will charge the animal owner for making the reports)

April 2006 USDA Implementation Plan (PDF)
After USDA’s plans for NAIS sparked an antiNAIS rebellion among farmers, ranchers, and noncommercial animal owners, in April 2006 Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns announced that NAIS would be "voluntary;" but that, unless USDA received 100% voluntary compliance, NAIS would be made "mandatory." The April 2006 Implementation Plan ("Strategies for the Implementation of NAIS") called for 2 million premises to be registered by 2009. The Implementation Plan set out a comprehensive set of "benchmarks" for premises registrations, for distribution of NAIS animal ID tags to premises, for animals with NAIS ID at slaughter, and for the number of animals with "complete movement records." The Plan strongly implied that if these goals were not met, NAIS would become fully mandatory. The goals appeared to be impossible to reach, e.g., the Implementation Plan goal of 2 million registered premises was greatly in excess of the 1.14 million total number of U.S. livestock farms in the most recent Census of Agriculture. Critics of USDA’s NAIS program therefore argued that the underlying purpose of the Implementation Plan was to set the stage for a completely mandatory NAIS, by setting impossible goals and making mandatory NAIS the only alternative if the goals were not met.

November 2006 USDA NAIS User Guide (PDF)
The User Guide, released on November 22, 2006, gave the first indication that USDA was planning to make NAIS animal ID and NAIS premises ID required for routine participation in "longstanding disease management programs" and in "interstate movement regulations." The User Guide states that NAIS animal ID "ultimately . . . will be the sole national numbering system for the official identification of individual animals in the United States." The Guide misleadingly claims that USDA is "technology neutral" as to the forms of ID devices, when in fact the only devices approved by USDA for use in the NAIS program are RFID eartags for cattle and microchips for horses. USDA officials have explained in public presentations that public-relations consultants were hired by the agency in 2006 to revise the previously unsuccessful NAIS "message" (as well as to monitor websites of the NAIS opposition). The influence of these public-relations professionals is apparent in the User Guide’s constant repetition of its new definition of NAIS as a "modern, streamlined information system" and in the substitution of the phrase "injectable transponders" for "microchips."

December 2007 USDA NAIS Business Plan (PDF)
The Business Plan reveals that USDA’s often repeated claim that NAIS is "voluntary" is untrue. USDA has constructed an elaborate program for compelling the use of NAIS premises ID and NAIS animal ID in nearly all significant livestock-related programs, whether government sponsored or privately managed. Government programs for disease testing and vaccination, and the regulation of interstate movement of livestock, will all require NAIS premises ID and in many cases NAIS animal ID. Apparently, many breed associations have already agreed that they will require NAIS animal ID (RFID eartags for cattle and microchips for horses) as a condition of registering animals. The Dairy Herd Improvement Association, which maintains performance records for about 50% of all dairy herds, will require NAIS identification. USDA plans a new national Coggins testing program for horses, mandating tests for all interstate movement and all sales of horses, with NAIS identification required as part of the testing procedure. Sheep and goat owners are already required to participate in NAIS through the scrapie eradication program, which "associates" every scrapie flock ID number with a NAIS premises ID number. Through this complex interconnected system of required uses of NAIS in government and private programs, USDA will make it nearly impossible for any livestock owners to escape inclusion in the so-called "voluntary" NAIS program.

April 2008 NAIS AMS (Agricultural Marketing Service) Business Plan (PDF)
The AMS oversees many USDA livestock-related programs, such as "process verification" programs (e.g., "natural," "grass-fed," or similar marketing claims), the National Organic Program, meat grading standards, and the Country-of-Origin Labeling (COOL) program presently under development. The AMS Business Plan describes the aggressive steps being undertaken to impose NAIS throughout such programs. For example, NAIS promotion is now to be financed with farmers’ own contributions to checkoff programs; AMS personnel will lobby the National Organic Standards Board to promote (or perhaps even require?) NAIS in the National Organic Program (organic producers have been among the most vocal opponents of NAIS); AMS will work with, for example, Tyson in the context of meat grading programs, to transfer live animal ID to carcasses (thus creating huge new liability exposure for farmers); AMS will create a Country-of-Origin Labeling "safe harbor" for NAIS participants (circumventing prior federal law against tying NAIS to COOL and causing meatpackers to force farmers and ranchers to accept NAIS).

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