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NAIS is weighted towards big corporations. The regulations allows one batch of factory farmed chickens to be "Virtually" tagged, meaning a label stuck on the door of the coop, where the chickens spend their entire lives. The RFID tags are never used on the animal, saving thousands of hours of labor, cost and equipment for the large producers.
However, if I have a flock of chickens, I need to tag each one. That means buying the equipment, tags, software and take the time to ensure that all this data is backed up and maintained. Hate to say this, but I live off the grid, and dealing with free range chickens is easy if you don't have to capture them and stress them out.
OK, so say that I am sold on the idea that "Knowing" where every animal is raised on earth is a good thing. Now I have to account for lost birds, and maintain the database. Meanwhile the Knapweed is getting ready to flower and needs to be mowed, but the mowers broken and needs repair. Or maybe an irrigation line needs repair, or maybe a nest of ground squireels has found it's way under the slab of the barn, etc.
Personally, I think the NAIS is just another way to discourage more small farmers from actually farming. The Big Agribusiness can afford the equipment, and the manpower, while the small farmer is more diversified and subject to crop failures and losses. Plus, if the NAIS goes through, it would be mandatory. That means that you cannot sell your chickens legally to anyone. Now personally, I don't raise chickens for others. I'm the one that gets the honor to feast on fresh eggs, and the delicious bird that spent it's very short life enthusiastically foraging for food while I tended the crops, or chased happily behind the mower for insect, converting these things into nutrients for the soil. But if I wanted to sell them, maybe to afford that Mower part that broke, I would be in violation of the law without all of the paraphernalia that goes along with NAIS.
As I recall, the major push for NAIS was after they Bush Administration claimed that Al Qaeda cropdusters were imminent, ready to spray some horrible pathogen. Well, that like story didn't pan out, after all, the farmers are already spraying enough nerve gas on our crops to kill the city of New York. So the next push for NAIS was becuase of avian Flu.
This beauty of Opinion Shaping uses the lame excuse that Wild Birds fly in and infect poulty farms. When one looks at the data, all outbreak of avian flu occurs within a small radius of Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO's) It was found that the horrifyingly crowded and unsanitary conditions of these CAFOS was contributing to high mortality and disease, so they we dumping antibiotics into the feed by the bucketfull. Meanwhile, they never bother to clean up the shit, so the birds walk around in their own, antibiotic laced excrement. When they do clean up the shit, they feed it to the Fish in Factory fish farms, and mix it into the cattle feed. What else are they going to do with mountains of this stuff? Sell it to you as Chicken Manure when it is laced with Antibiotics? Well, yes, they do.
The Avian Flu has now been found to riginate within these factory farms, and it is tracked out into the wild by the workers on their footwear. I maintained a small flock of birds during ther heyday of Avian Flu. I was totally alert, and when neighbors chickens died unexpectedly, I was on top of it, notified the officials, and was promptly left in the dark. The local officials weren't concerned. Then I stumbled upon a book regarding this topic, I wish I could remember the name, but it outlined most of what I related above. I have done much research on this, and do not buy in to the NAIS program. It is an invasive regulation that removes our right to grow food without onerous paperwork, and extra cost and labor. I have enough work to do on my farm. I don't need any more. I can keep track of my birds on a piece of paper and a pencil. I don't need to RFID device implanted in my birds.
Considering the debacle recently where thousands of pounds of meat was contaminated at the "Value Added Processing Plant" where they marinate the salmonella and E. Coli deep within the pores of the meat along with the marinade, RFID would serve no purpose. They don't label GMO's, so until then, I would not even consider anything as insidious as NAIS.
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