Anti-NAIS arguments smack of neo-Luddism

2009. The USDA has been authorized the engage in tough enforcement measures — fines, inspections of properties, and confiscation or redistribution of livestock without trial or legal hearings and with no compensation to the owner of the animals. Failure to register your home or farm with a Premise ID already faces a $1,000 fine in some states.

The purpose of NAIS is not to prevent disease or contamination in the food supply. The goal of the program is to provide a forty-eight hour trace back to the farm of origin in the case of problems, a requirement for export to foreign markets. Minton, a critic of NAIS, says that NAIS is an outgrowth of international agreements brought to the USDA by the National Institute of Animal Agriculture, a not-for-profit organization consisting of large meat packers, manufacturers of animal tags and tag-reading equipment, and the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture. “These are the organizations benefiting financially from the NAIS. Farmers, ranchers, and producers who must pay for this program were not invited to participate in its development.”

We think she goes too far in her criticism of the program, just as she goes too far in belittling the program’s benefits. It is true that the USDA does not have enough inspectors to inspect meat processing and food production. It is also true, as we have written, the there is a growing disparity between, on the one hand, the increasing quantities of foods and food ingredients being imported into the United States, and, on the other hand, the diminishing ability of the USDA and the FDA to monitor this growing wave of imports (this diminishing ability is not a law of nature, but the result of the Bush administration’s budgetary and policy choices). This criticism aside, there is no reason why the United States should not avail itself of the latest tracking technology to detect and then contain the spread of animal-borne disease in the population.

Let us just take the example of cattle: The way cattle is now being raised and prepared makes this new tracking technique essential. Back in the day, a farmer or rancher would monitor and take care of a cow from the time it was born all the way to the slaughterhouse. These days are gone. It is not only the case that cattle is now being raised in large, anonymous lots containing thousands of heads of cattle: Different farms (or “agro-farms”) now specialize in taking care of cows at different stages of their life cycle: Calves are herded and being taken care of by one large farm and then, when they reach a certain age, they are shuttled in the thousands to another farm, specializing in taking care of cattle at this particular age group; then, after a few weeks, they are moved to yet another large farm, and so on until they are ready to be processed.

If one of these cows comes down with, say, mad cow disease, the only way to trace its history is through the NAIS tagging system. Such tracing is essential, becasue it will reveal other cows which were members of the same herd — and will also tell where each of these cows is at the moment. If cows have already been processed, the tagging system will allow USDA immediately to locate the slaughterhouse to which the cow was sent.

We can use this line of reasoning to justify the use of tags for other animals in this day of industrial agriculture. Does this mean that every old couple with a couple of goats, or kids with a ferret or a pot belly pig as pets, should be burdened with tagging their animals? This is another question that should be debated. The knee-jerk reaction in many quarters against NAIS, however, misses the larger point: Call it mature capitalism or call it something else, but the fact is that we have been steadily, inexorably moving to an industrialized, centralized food production system. There are efficiencies associated with the economy of scale here, but also the risk that infection from animals could rapidly spread through the population.

NAIS will not prevent these infections, but it will go a long way toward quickly, and with certainty, identifying the infected animal and other animals associated with it. This knowledge will then serve as basis for containment at recall decisions. When fashioning policy, it is always better to know more than to know less. NAIS will help decision makers know more.