May I have your chicken's ID number, please?

Black shiny shoes... laced up FBI shoes - the ones that got Ken Kesey... remember? in Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test?

Black shiny INS shoes are now rounding up immigrants (like all of us Americans who are not native to the US lands) and putting them in jails - rounding them up for deportation [1]. It’s big business and it’s a growth industry in a failing economy.

But consider this news – well maybe news to urban dwellers on the brink of an urban agricultural revolution – National Animal Identification System (NAIS) is coming to a herd, flock, gaggle near you. In fact, NAIS will even come to your hunt club, your polo club and your riding school. Want to take your horse out for a ride or transport the animal to a show? You’d better be sure s/he has proper ID (animal green cards?).  Imagine those black shiny shoes stomping around in cow pastures and at horse shows…Oh my goodness you’re thinking – every animal with a chip in its flesh? Will we one day be ingesting these biochips? Maybe… but not if you eat food from large agribusinesses because they can ID an entire herd or flock with one number.

“Every person who owns even just one horse, donkey, chicken, pigeon, goat, llama, sheep, pig, cow, alpaca, duck, farmed fish, etc. must register their name, home address, telephone number and Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates of their home in a Federal database.  Secondly, in order for any animal to leave its birth farm, the owner will be required to obtain a Federal ID number for it which will be kept in a national data base and have the animal biochipped. Animals will have to be registered if they leave the farm for any reason; to go on a trail ride, to go to a show or fair, to be bought or sold, to be bred by a stud on another farm, or to be taken to the local butcher, or anywhere else. The most likely type of ID will be a bio-microchip containing a low power radio transmitter so that the chips can be read from a distance. NAIS would allow “industry” to decide if retinal scans and DNA samples would also be required. Of course large scale Agrobiz has exempted itself from individual identification. (Agrobiz producers will be allowed to use one ID number for groups of hundreds or even thousands of animals that are raised and processed together.)

Americans will be required to report every time an animal enters or leaves their property, every time an animal loses a tag, every time a tag is replaced, the slaughter or death of an animal, or if an animal is missing. Such events must be reported in 24 hours or owners would suffer an as yet unspecified penalty. Small family farms and organic farmers will be driven out of business by the costs of premises registration fees, individual animal ID fees, event reporting fees, electronic tags or chips, electronic readers, home computers, Internet access, phone service, and reporting software. According to the USDA's plan all of these costs will be born by the animal owners [2].”

So apparently our consumer options are already assisting in 1984 style tracking via RFID chips installed in products we purchase [3].

Now animals, too? I know what you’re thinking… when will ordinary citizens be required to be tagged or chipped [4]? (Some soldiers already are chipped apparently). That remains to be seen… stay tuned though, it can’t be far off.