Keep a chicken (or a horse), go to jail....

gego · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Mar 03, 2005 Posts: 1334

I think this will happen because beef ranchers want it. They are already promoting a volintary program. This came about because of mad cow disease. Other countries ban the import of beef from countries where mad cow disease is identified. The beef ranchers suffered when Japan banned US beef after a few cases of mad cow disease here.

You can bet that the current bird flu will be an excuse to force identification of poultry farmers and their flocks.

This will be hard to enforce for someone who does not try to sell his cattle and just raises a few for himself; same with chickens, but if you try to sell your cattle at the local livestock auction you will not be allowed in and the livestock auction is where they will enforce this. Most of the small cattle producers sell thru the local livestock auction, although there are a few small sales from one rancher to another outside of the auction.

Just another case of people foolishly giving up freedom when they are scared.

Of course, if the collapse comes via the route of a sudden and permanent failure of the electric system, then the electronic records will not do the government much good from the point of view of coming and confiscating your animals for their own use. More likely, they will use the system to force you to slaughter your animals in a disease type crisis as is happening to Asian and Eastern European poultry producers.

Aaron

nero · Last edited by nero on Mon Oct 17, 2005 1:33 pm; edited 1 time in total

This will happen for all the reasons that gego said. All cattle in Canada are already supposed to be registered. I don't know how exactly the Amish here cope, but I expect it isn't too onerous a system. It simply means keeping records and putting an ear tag in all your animals and maybe taking a blood sample.

This will be much harder to enforce for poultry but if and when avian flu enters the human population you can make a bet that your local chicken fancier's unregistered flock will make a convenient scape goat.
_________________
Biofuels: The "What else we got to burn?" answer to peak oil.

Ludi

They can get bent.
Mad

_________________
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smallpoxgirl · Moderator Joined: Nov 08, 2004 Posts: 5210

Wow! I am really hopping mad about this. There truly is no end to the depravity!

I think I'm going to write a letter to my congressman and a letter to the editor for my local paper. With the number of people who have chickens and goats around here, there ought to be a ton of opposition to this.

Shannymara · Master Joined: Oct 04, 2004 Posts: 5141 Location: Oklahoma

I can see this for feedlot cattle, perhaps, but certainly not for small farms or homesteads. Freedom for "security", anyone? Mad

I'll say this, if it does come to pass I won't do it under any circumstances. And I mean that quite literally. This is a line in the sand issue for me.

I'll mull over a letter to our paper, too. Let me know the response to yours please, Smallpoxgirl. BTW I hope your move was smooth and you like the new home.

elroy

rogerhb

MacG · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jun 04, 2005 Posts: 1169

Hahaha! You will be royally screwed. Like us. We got roughly the same stuff in the EU since a couple of years, minus the RFID. For time beeing.

This is all about the government-memeplex. It exist for it's own sake, just as all other memes and memeplexes. For this particular one to exist, it is absolutely neccesary that EVERYONE is depending on the Big System for their day-to-day existence. If just one or two examples of true independence memes are allowed to exist, there is a significant risk that they will spread and hollow the base of the government-memeplex.

Dont worry though, all of it will come crushing down by it's own weight in due time. In the mean time, meat rabbits seem to be excluded.

turkey_farmer · Coal Joined: Jun 12, 2005 Posts: 4

This certainly is a serious concern--but not news to those who are serious about keeping livestock.

If it will help keep your anxiety levels down, the government would have an almost impossible task to wipe out backyard poultry flocks.

Imagine that the destruction of poultry flocks starts making the news. Without any organization, without the need of consulting each other or "conspiring", tens of thousands of poultry fanciers might decide to prepare to hold back some fertile eggs in case their flock was confiscated. Pull out the little incubator that was buried in the woods, and in three or four weeks you have the beginnings of a new flock.

Even if only 10 or 20 percent were sucessful in preserving a viable flock in this way, think now what it would take to stamp out this resistance. Is the government going to ban the sale and transportation of all eggs? Will police checkpoints be set up in every grocery store to make sure that some of the eggs being sold aren't "fertile and room temperature"? Are they going to knock on doors and inspect the eggs on everyone's kitchen counter?

How about television news coverage of agents breaking into the home of a 7 or 8-year old 4-H kid (a very popular youth club to promote rural skills for those of you non-US readers) --agents dressed in a bio-hazard suit--and snatching the kid's prize rooster?

You get the idea.

I'm not saying the government won't try and intimidate people from raising their own livestock for food. But if things get bad enough for them to try all of the above I think that I'd be more worried about being thrown against a wall and shot for writing "anti-government" propaganda than for the couple of dozen birds that I have in my back yard.

-TF

cornholio

My friend (who raises some sheep and some chickens) is worried about the tagging mainly from an economic point of view... The profit margin for a small farmer is small already. The additional dollars per animal for tagging would be easier for large corporate farms to bear...

rogerhb

cornholio

Vercabre · Coal Joined: Oct 17, 2005 Posts: 1

Considering this is being done in cahoots with monsanto...

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/monsanto-pig-patent-111

I think what we are seeing here is an efficient way for monsanto to garner breeding info.
Farmers have been doing this for millenia, breeding cows etc for desireable genes. What should be disturbing is monsanto wont be happy with a nature, theyll start tinkering with dna.

considering the track record with plants how bad would it be to see non-breeding monsanto cows or chickens locking farmers into a permanent contract, finding cause to destroy herds because they were not manufactured.

No good can come of this, its a shot in the foot against rationality.

gego · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Mar 03, 2005 Posts: 1334

"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties."
James Madison

Seems like the alarm is coming a little late.