The N.A.I.S?

Yesterday, I was shown a rather interesting article; it seems that the animal rights activists are up to their old tricks again. Unbeknownst to me, and probably most people, many months ago the US Department of Agriculture instituted a National Animal Identification System (NAIS). At this point, the system is voluntary, but you can bet the goal is to make it mandatory in the future. The basics of the system are simple: you, as an animal owner, register your pet, farm animal etc, and then the governemnt can monitor the health of the animals, any potential diseases they carry, the breeding of the animals, do 'recordkeeping' on the animals, and probably some other things as well.

The main point of this is to help monitor diseases spread by animals here in the US (or at least that seems to be the main selling point). Of course, this hardly makes any sense because first of all the logistics of managing a system that can monitor all of the livestock in this country are mind-boggling and would render the system extremely inefficient; and second because the system does not deal with wild animals, which are, in fact, more deadly to humans.

Furthermore, the system is a complete waste of money (14.5 million was granted last summer), and a completely needless invasion of privacy. That the governemnt should be able to keep tabs on my dog or a farmer's chickens makes no sense. I mean, imagine the hassle that it would take for a farmer to have to throw in a bunch of NAIS paperwork, in order that the government might know every detail about his cattle.

Indeed, a better question would seem to be why the government would really want to keep tabs on these sorts of things, especially since the 'disease' reason makes no sense. Now, this is purely speculation, but I'm guessing it might be the desires of animal rights activists to have a legal 'gottcha' available. Imagine, if this NAIS gets passed into law, PETA can now go to a farm and instead of just yelling like idiots at how 'mean' the farmer is being to the cows, they can prosecute him under the new laws that will complement this system. So basically, this could be a way to get stricter animal cruelty laws on the books under the guise of something else.

*******Update*******

For anyone interested in finding out more about the fallacy of the NAIS, or in trying to stop the program, please check out Walter Jeffries' site: noNAIS.org