THE COUNTDOWN TO EQUINE EXTINCTION
The topic of National Animal Identification System (NAIS)
has been “blowing in the wind” since early 2005. It was
then that horse industry leaders first heard about the possibility
of horses being required to carry federal identification. Some
of us thought it might be enough that our animals were registered
and papered or that they carried a freeze-brand or a brand applied
with an iron. Nevertheless, the idea of an implanted microchip
bearing a multiple-digit number loomed as a bizarre possibility.
SOME BACKGROUND
In May 2005, when discussion and/or criticism of NAIS at
the federal level was invited, I intended to step up to the
bat and provide useful information.
Instead I discovered that I had an aggressive form of breast
cancer. During the ensuing months of chemotherapy, the chemical
effects of the treatment left me incapable of focused communication.
Before you read any further, please know that we are not
pro-slaughter because in a just world such treatment of our
beloved animals is not something we neither do nor contemplate.
However, in this imperfect world there are some producers that
overproduce, some who will breed 20-100 just to get one
champion prospect. The others become throwaways. And let’s not
forget the rejects that cannot make it at the race tracks, worn-out
and broken down, or all the babies that are throwaways so their
dams can be nursemaids for a Thoroughbred mare that is too valuable
to take time away breeding or from the track to nurse her own
foal.
The time of this writing is January 2008. The clock has been
ticking away. The so-called anti-slaughter bills of 2007 have
resulted in the closing of all plants that process horsemeat
in the United States. Although not yet law, a bill to prohibit
any transport of horses across U.S. borders to potential processing
plants in Canada and Mexico is well on its way to passage. As
a result of this 2007 legislation, some 100,000 unwanted and
unusable horses provide a glut of horses and reduce the market
value of horses with training. Additionally, the imposition
of NAIS as a mandatory, rather than voluntary, program looms
if passage of the 2007 Farm Bill occurs before March 15, 2008.
These two phenomena, the Anti-Slaughter Bill and the 2007
Farm Bill, are potentially very close to spelling the
extinction of a vibrant horse market
for the near future. For two years every inquiry I made of Ohio
legislators and Ohio Farm Bureau was answered with a routine
answer: Equine identification within National Animal Identification
System (NAIS) will be voluntary. The majority of people that
we queried either laughed at us or looked at us as though we
were from the Outer Limits. The majority of horse practitioners
and owners insisted that “It can’t happen here because it will
be a bureaucratic nightmare.”
THE IMMINENT REALITY
We are faced with a market for horses that is virtually
nonexistent because there is a surplus of unwanted, unusable,
and unsound horses, often the old-timers, the babies with no
marketable skills, the fractious, the lame, the sick, the abused,
and the expendable horses that wound up in the so-called Killer
Market. As of 2008, with the Bush economy stagnant, the cost
and availability of grain and hay pushing them beyond the reach
of many owners, and many owners begging for others to provide
good homes for their herds because they will not survive the
winter, many responsible owners find themselves between a rock
and a hard place. Do they watch their horses slowly starve because
of inability to find and provide quality nourishment or do they
euthanize?
We now know that the combination of the outlawing of the
horse-processing market and the cost of euthanization of non-viable
horses has reduced the value of the average registered pedigreed
horse value of $600 per head. Add to this loss of value the
cost of regular farrier work at $200 per year, the cost of boarding
at about $4000-$5000 per year, the cost of registration at about
$50-200 per head, and standard vet care twice per year at about
$300-450. Now add the costs of compliance with a mandatory NAIS
program: $65-100 for an implanted microchip and $750-$1000 per
year for a monthly vet-issued health certificate to permit your
horse to be off your property to get vet or farrier service,
to attain an extra level of training by participating in a trail
ride, to get an extra level of experience by participating in
a $4-per class fun show, to gain accolades at a nationally-recognized
show like Quarter Horse Congress or Arabian Nationals. The total
cost to provide your horse extra expertise and/or experience
approaches $6000. These costs do not include the cost of feed
or the human labor involved with maintaining the health of the
horse.
Similarly, today many registries are facing decreased numbers
of registered horses. Nevertheless, USDA plans to use registries
to implement NAIS.
WE CAN TELL YOU FROM FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE
THAT DEBBIE FUENTES ON 1/31/08 AUTHORIZED THE ARABIAN HORSE
ASSOCIATION WEBSITE TO REFLECT THE POSITION THAT ARABIAN HORSES
WILL NEED MICROCHIPPING BY 2010 FOR REGISTRATION WITH AHA.
http://forums.ablackhorse.com
(Read the white box at left)
The clock depicting 11:55 is meant to demonstrate how close
to extinction many breeds and registries
really are, especially if additional mandatory restrictions
are placed on breeders and owners. The NAIS, which is to be
administered by State Departments of Agriculture, has already
produced an outcry second only to the revolutionary spirit that
prompted the thirteen colonies to become independent from Great
Britain. The straw that broke the camel’s back during the colonial
era was “taxation without representation.” Today, NAIS appears
imminent if we let USDA sock it to us without protest. Under
the guise of giving aid to some farm producers, NAIS will require
horse owners to implant microchips with a 15-digit number that
will be maintained in a federal database said to be inaccessible
to the owner if his horse is lost or stolen. Indeed, since horses
are no longer even to be used for human consumption, there is
no reason to rationalize that microchips will permit rapid reporting
of diseased horsemeat. Further, there is
substantial clinical evidence that microchips are carcinogenic
in long-lived animals like horses.
Once breeders and owners stop producing and registering horses,
what’s to become of those that are a perceived liability rather
than a source of value? We have heard accounts already of horses
being abandoned in state parks serious cases of neglect and
abuse, where county rescue agencies need to remove dead horses
and file charges against owners for alleged animal cruelty.
For those owners who are desperate to maintain their own survival
with no way to place their animals into loving and caring homes,
the final, caring act may simply be to release their horses
onto private or public property to fend for themselves as strays.
We have seen the likes of mandatory NAIS before. Many of
you are too young to remember the Brown Shirts of World War
II or the youth who turned in their own parents and family to
the Nazis in exchange for spending money and a pat on the back.
The links cited at the top right of this article, newspaper
articles which made their appearance in newspapers across the
United States during December 2007- January 1-14, 2008, provide
graphic detail about strong-arm tactics used by the United States
Department of Agriculture to coerce registration into state-administered
NAIS programs under state Departments of Agriculture. There
is evidence that USDA has poured huge amounts of funding into
the treasuries of local farm groups like FFA and 4H. “Since
2004, USDA has pledged more than $52 million to states and farm
groups to promote premises registration—but they must register
a certain number of farms to get the money.” (Los
Angeles Times, 14 January 2008 page 2). There are reports
of farms and farmers being registered into NAIS without their
knowledge. Teenagers have been told that if they wish to show
their animals at local fairs, their parents’ farms must be NAIS-compliant.
Newspaper articles indicate that some of the most flagrant examples
of loss of personal rights and liberties are occurring in Colorado,
Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts,
Missouri, Idaho, New York, and Tennessee (Journal
Pilot, 9 January 2008;
The Nation, 14 December 2007). Nebraska recently became
the tenth state to achieve fifty percent-compliance for premises
registration.
Of the 1,400,000+ known farms, only 440,997 had voluntarily
registered for Premise Identification Numbers as of January
7, 2008, according to the Los Angeles Times. Voluntary compliance
is only at 30.9%. Clearly NAIS is meeting huge resistance, if
small farm owners retain any freedom of choice at all. A significant
number of Amish farmers who object to microchipping on the grounds
of “Revelation 13:17” have already abandoned their dairy herds
en masse. ”Some of Wisconsin’s most conservative Amish groups
have reportedly considered a mass migration to Venezuela.” (The
Nation, 14 December 2007 page 1)
There is mounting evidence that many breeds will simply cease
to exist between harsh economic conditions and unreasonable
government dictatorial procedures. In the past horse breeds
like the Lipizzaner, the American Crème, and the Suffolk Punch
faced the prospect of extinction
because of harsh conditions. “Since 2000 at least one livestock
breed has disappeared every month, and roughly 20 percent of
the world’s livestock breeds are at risk of
extinction according to the report
[Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations.] Perhaps the cruelest
irony of NAIS is that by hastening the demise of genetic diversity
it may ultimately expose the food supply to catastrophic and
irreversible risks.” (The
Nation, 14 December 2007 page 3)
SO WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT, 5 MINUTES BEFORE MIDNIGHT
ON THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK?
We are providing links to
http://www.congress.org.
Contact your U.S. Representatives, your U.S. Senators, your
state Senators, your state Representatives, your Governor, and
yes, even your honorable President, simply by plugging in your
zip code. Compose a brief letter stating your opposition to
the repressive and dictatorial practices of getting NAIS quietly
passed. Tell your legislator how NAIS will eliminate the local
farmers’ markets and your ability to deal directly with the
livestock producer and the equine producer. You do not have
much time in the great scheme of things.
When you send a letter to President Bush tell him your opposition
to the imposition of repression and dictatorship. While you’re
at it, ask him why he has not registered his own ranch in Crawford,
Texas, or registered his own herd of eight cattle. (Los
Angeles Times, 14 January 2008) Writing this letter will
take some courage because you will have to identify yourself
as a real person with a real address and a real e-mail. If you
are afraid now, though, just think how fearful existence in
a security-insatiable USA may be in five years.
Horses are vitally important to us. Without our survival
as a free and independent people, there may not be any more
horses in the United States...
"The ultimate tragedy is not the brutality of the bad
people, but the silence of the good people." -Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr
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