On-Premises Registration
In Response to Premises Registration piece in 7/06 TFBN
If the government had a legal right to your land and animals, why make you fill out and sign a premises registration form? If something�s yours and you own it, don�t you just take it? Conversely, the government has the right to punish you when you commit murder, but you never signed an I-won�t-murder form.
So, what types of things do you sign? Papers when you sell land. Those three or four pages they hand you at your first doctor�s visit. You sign contracts. In a contract you agree to give something and so does the other party. When you�re at the doctor�s office, he�s agreeing to treat you and you�re agreeing to pay him. It�s fairly obvious. The problem is that when we�re talking about premises registration, the other party � the government � is not telling you what you�re agreeing to. As a matter of fact, they�re not telling you what they�re agreeing to either. So you have a contract, but you don�t know what anybody�s agreeing to. Why?
This ambiguity, or mystery, if you will, begs questions about premises registration. What does it allow? As unrealistic as it may be, if the NAIS remains limited only to disease containment and eradication, what�s your premises� part in that? Can people that work for the government come on your farm when they want, if it�s registered? Do you waive any rights of search and seizure? Do you waive any ownership rights of land or animals? If these questions remain unanswered, we can only assume that the government and others advocating the NAIS consider them immaterial and unimportant. If questions about private property are irrelevant, then isn�t private property, in practice, dead? I mean, if there�s no reason to talk about it, then there�s a reason there�s no reason to talk about it. Right?
That leaves us with this program through which our government and Farm Bureau are encouraging you to, very possibly, sign away your legal claim of ownership on your property and animals. What do I mean by losing your legal claim of ownership? Well, first, I�m no lawyer, but it doesn�t take much schooling to figure out that if someone can come to your farm and go get one of your animals and handle it, give it a shot, or kill it without your yea or nea, you don�t own that animal. You might be a conscientious caretaker, but you are not the owner of that animal. Furthermore, if they implement a program that allows them to do this, whether or not they actually come out and kill your cows, you own nothing. And the legal change is being made now. Just because they don�t come out next week and shoot your cows or cart off your chickens, don�t fall asleep.
Kind of makes questions about the costs of NAIS, the incredible unreliability of RFID tags, and supposed looming animal diseases appear as the red herrings they really are. But it also is awfully depressing to think about.
So what do we do?
I�d take a lighter with me to every single meeting about the NAIS. Take the premises registration form they hand you, pull out your lighter, and burn that damn thing in front of your county extension agent and every other farmer in the room. Maybe then they�ll start asking some real questions that make sense. At the very least, tear that form up in front of ‘em.
