X Spurts

The vultures are already gathering......

I just hung up on a potential hay customer. 

Rudely. 

Color me not much of a businesswoman. After several minutes of lectures about how we have to deliver, how we can't say first come first served for hay....we do not hold it for anyone....came warnings about Johne's from spreading manure because of the state, meat not being safe to eat, and on and on, I lost it at Roundup in milk.

No.

Just no.

We don't have to do anything we don't want to do other than pay taxes and die. We don't have to deliver. We don't have to hold hay for complete strangers, just because they say so, when we have good customers who are nice people who come regularly. 

And there is no Roundup in milk. I intend to continue drinking a goodly quantity of said milk every single day until I fulfill one of those requirements above, and I don't mean the taxes....although that is why we sell hay in the first place...to pay taxes.

Somebody else wants the rest of the hay anyhow, and will soon be here to pick it up. 

Color me glad. Then I can go back to only answering the phone when I recognize the number, thus only talking to friends, family, and the library.

All I want for Christmas

Is NOT website updates. Facebook is bad enough. Every time they roll out something new, we all hate it. Then we all learn to deal with it. Then we forget it and move on.

Facebook is just for fun and all and if we don't like it we don't have to use it. Although changing things around almost randomly, such as the youngsters who manage it like to do, is annoying, it is not of any real importance.

However, the bank website is a horse of a different color. I manage a number of accounts for farm and family and use our bank's website frequently. Been doing so for years.

Just this week the company rolled out a fancy new site intended apparently for people who are too financially challenged to understand the difference between pending items and those which have cleared.

Thus the pending items are greyed out, making it ever so difficult for older folks such as myself to read the nearly invisible print. Oh, and they don't post totals for anything that is pending either....How very helpful of them to require me to use the calculator or do actual math....horrors.....

They also put lots of pretty pictures in the background and ads for pointless services right in the list of transactions. Just what everyone needs for Christmas, right?

They send me surveys on how well I like their services and such almost weekly...... I simply can't wait for the next one. This keyboard is gonna be smokin'.

Country of Origin Labeling

These are places where American food is grown

Or COOL.

Are you one of those people? Who read every label and peruse every sticker on every single bag of fruit or package of vegetables or Styrofoam container of sausages to see where the food originated?

I am and I don't regret it one bit.

We have good friends who farm in this area

I want to know that when I serve a bowl of strawberries to Peggy or bite into a crisp Granny Smith that it was grown by American farmers and picked and shipped and processed under American food safety regulations.

Having been a dairy farmer for the majority of my life, working in what may be one of the most regulated of food industries, I have first hand knowledge of what goes into making our food safe....I have been forced by milk inspectors to pressure wash the gutter behind the cows......I know ten thousand ways to clean a bulk tank and keep it that way.

Having been an ag  columnist for 17 years I have learned a lot about what is done to inspect food being imported. There is NO comparison! A lot of food that comes into this country comes in on a sort of honor system...an inspection here and there, but by no means ubiquitous oversight.

It is one thing to import from neighboring nations that also work under stringent rules....but our new food trading buddies are going to be Pacific Rim nations...possibly including..... you know....China....thanks to the TPP

Those stickers and labels are probably going bye-bye. Since the World Trade Organization has once again struck down US COOL laws and Congress is scurrying to comply, I have one simple, homegrown solution to not wanting my apples and chicken to come from China...where we all know feed safety is not exactly paramount.

We are making plans to remove the old cement sink that clutters up the back porch and buy another freezer. We already raise our own beef, turkeys, get venison off our own land, and grow and freeze a lot of vegetables. We get strawberries locally and apples and other things we don't yet grow ourselves.

Black locust in bloom Town of Glen

Once the old sink is gone we are going shopping for another medium-sized freezer. Storage space has been one of the constraints holding us back from growing more of our own....we can fix that.

Jade's grandpa is giving him his rototiller, which makes expanding the gardens quite possible. 

A river flats cornfield in the Town of Glen

We can do this.

And Congress and their donors and their caving in to world interests at the expense of American interests can all go to Hell.

Maybe this little farm can't feed the world, but we can sure go a long way towards feeding ourselves.

Some tasty food stories for your enjoyment and enlightenment:

Donkey Meat recalled
It hasn't worked for Mexico
Or pets

The Chinese stories...horror stories that is....never end.

McDonalds
Yummy....we can get chicken there now
And pork (Meanwhile on American dairy farms water sources are inspected several times a year and water samples pulled and tested by official inspectors)

I could do this all day. The stories of tainted food from countries that will now be our best buddy trading partners and won't have to say so on the packaging are everywhere you care to look. Overseas newspapers are on them like white on rice so to speak. You won't see much here.

I Shouldn't Read so Much

Yesterday was a day for major aggravation on the Internet for me. First there was a story from a large, but very animal-rightsy, newspaper in the region bemoaning the horror of raising fat, juicy turkeys and calling strongly for a return to nomming on old-fashioned, wild-style turkeys.


Because life is so much better for the skinny, stringy, wild-type ones you know. They live forever, happily mating and eating rainbow stew and are so much better for themselves and for us and for the environment and all.....Nobody eats them until they have lived out their happy lives...oh, wait, what about coyotes? And they die happy when we do eat them.


Anyhow, the story graveled the heck out of me. Especially since the guy bitching and moaning about modern agriculture is a legislator who wants to write new laws so we all have to raise and eat "heritage" critters the way the Shakers did. Cause it "seems" nicer. Which in a nutshell encompasses most of the touchy-feely, well-meaning, but ill informed arguments against modern farming methods.
Um, does anybody remember why the Shakers died out? I don't think their ideas would translate too awful well into feeding the hungry world. I don't think much of 'em at all, at all.


I think even less of wealthy, privileged, individuals abusing their position to dictate to folks who maybe can't afford to keep three or four turkeys like little pets, eat maybe one a year, and then pat themselves on the back for how humane they are. How about a little humanity for folks who have less and need to buy cheaper food or go without?


In past years the table in the dining room has been ringed with most of my family, and groaned under the food we cooked for Thanksgiving. There were oftentimes two turkeys, a wild (not too far removed from "heritage" ones) and a conventionally-raised, store bought one. Our guests enjoyed the chance to taste the wild bird, which was good even if it took a lot of gravy to make it tender and juicy.


 But there was barely enough for each of them to have one bite. The big ol' store brand tom though....that was another story. He was the one who sent them home sleepy and comfortable with fond memories of the feast. Folks used to know about hunger so they appreciated plenty...and they bred turkeys to grow big and tender and flavorful.


We can certainly all return to historic methods of food production. Been there, done that. We can grow our own here at the farm and process it from feathered to food. However there will be a few million folks starving in other places who wish we didn't. The methods by which livestock is raised for food have been evolving since mankind first welcomed wild animals to the campfire. They are followed because they are economical, sustainable, and use resources efficiently. This may not matter to wealthy folks who want to brag about how their food was raised, but in the end they are better for the many. Check out this article by a true expert on modern ag. It should be required reading in the NYS Assembly.


And then there was the HuffPo piece about what you shouldn't want in your food and how organic milk doesn't have any hormones so it is better than conventionally produced milk. As one of my Facebook friends pointed out, you can find stuff in the pen with the bull that fits in with the veracity of that story. All foods have hormones. Try a soybean. No wait...


Really, I need to stop reading this stuff.....

Caution Full Speed Rant Ahead

I was grumpy yesterday, I admit it. One of my favorite cows is doing very poorly and will probably not make it. The heifer I have been hand caring for, carrying all her food and water from the house and barn and trailers for over a week, had a dead heifer calf yesterday morning. She is still far from out of the woods herself.


These are things we must take in stride, if you have animals you will lose some. Just as pets die so do farm animals. It hurts, but there is little to be done but soldier on.


However, as I was dragging the eighth pair of buckets of water up from the house, I thought about how all of us farm folks are supposed to somehow teach non-farm folks about what we do, why we do it that way, and explain to them why activists groups and food companies like Chipotle are not necessarily giving them all the information, or the right information, about modern farming methods. 


Oftentimes agenda-driven organizations are downright lying to them, but with their glitzy horror videos and sad-eyed pets, and even cartoons, they are very convincing.


But according to far too many arm chair experts, we farmers must somehow counteract their million-dollar ad campaigns with words of our own. 


No matter how frustrated we are made by the falsehoods we hear and the attacks that are made on us, we must be civil and non-confrontational. Every magazine editor, website and organization has some reason why, when farmers do attempt to follow through with ag promotion, they are doing it wrong, not doing it enough, or somehow are entirely to blame for what is going on in the anti-farming culture that dominates the media. They completely ignore the fact that every beef and dairy farmer already pays, before they see a penny from milk or beef checks, for promotion of their products by people who are trained for the job. They forget that every farmer who works at promotion, the good folks who write silly songs, put up Youtube videos and talk to folks in the grocery story have demanding day jobs that require time and effort.


And as I toted water, and toted hay, and fielded men looking for ropes..... in the house (the only ropes in the house are for the dogs) I got downright irritated at those editors and such. 


The original reason I started this blog was to do all that stuff about putting a face on agriculture. I am not sure that ever happened, but it has turned out to be an incredible amount of fun, I love the people I have met...sometimes you are the only thing that keeps me sane.....and sometimes, just a few times, I may have even made a tiny difference in how someone from the other side of the sidewalk views farming.


However the day will never come when what I say here or in the Farm Side will outweigh  what people see on slick TV ads or on billboards in Albany. Those campaigns are waged by trained professionals with deep pockets behind them.


I think making an effort should count. I think there are a lot of pretty darned cool farmers working hard on Twitter, Facebook, and just about everywhere they can, taking time that they could surely use for their day jobs, to moonlight in ag promotion. I think certain industry spokes folks should cut them a little bit of slack.


Rant over, thank you.

Organic Kids

Suppose we raised organic kids like they do organic cows. The slick marketers of organic goods will feed you all this stuff about better for the earth, (which considering that it takes more ground to grow organic stuff, seems like a bunch of bull hockey), etc. but what about the animals involved?


Organic cows do not get treated with antibiotics when they are sick. Their owners rely on topical, herbal, or homeopathic remedies. If cows don't respond to those treatments they die or are sold to someone who does use conventional medicine to treat them or sold for beef. (That's why they call farms like ours conventional...we do things the way regular people do.)


So suppose your "organic" little human comes down with a desperate case of pneumonia or some other serious bacterial illness, needs intensive care, and a conventional antibiotic, then what? Do you treat him with a herbal supplement...or do you sell him to the neighbor who feels it appropriate to treat children...or cows....with modern, tested, legal, safe medicines?


I know which way I would go, but then I am kind of conventional.


I try not to bash any kind of farming here on Northview, as there are far too few of us farmers left not to stick together. However, I am just plain sick of having organic dairy farming shoved in my face everywhere I look, as if it were the only answer to food production. I KNOW what happens to cows on organic farms that get sick. And if you have a pet dog or cat, you know that even the best cared for animals DO get sick  sometimes.......I would love to give you a quote on the topic from a trusted professional in the animal medical field with whom we regularly do business on what they think of the care of organic cattle but I don't have permission so I won't. 


However, we wouldn't think of expecting our children to get along in the modern world without modern medicine, so why do we act as if asking the same of dairy cows is practically a religious duty?


Every single farmer's bulk tank is tested for antibiotic residues every single time the truck from the company picks up milk. If there is a positive finding the FARMER pays for the whole tanker load of milk...not cheap! So there are no antibiotics in your milk no matter what kind of farm produces it. 


If you want to pay through the nose for organic products, which are generally chemically indistinguishable from conventional products, have at it, but you might want to think about the cows involved.

Vandalism

Only in the NY Times could bombing the Pentagon be called vandalism....even extreme vandalism.

I am old enough to have been terrified by the Vietnam War too. The boss's best friend died within days after being deployed there.
We still visit his grave every year...but we somehow managed to avoid ever bombing anything, even so much as a mailbox. I would feel better if people who did commit such excessive, criminal, and to my mind reprehensible acts, weren't given such a positive pulpit.

Hay weather (not)

Here it comes

Yep, that's rain

And there it goes again

I am hoping real hard for a couple weeks of precipitation-free weather. For three weeks now, I don't think we have gone two days without a shower, many of them very heavy. In one two or three day period the man we buy straw from said we had nine inches. There is simply no place for that much water to go. You also cannot bale decent hay in this kind of season and we need to get some. The guys are chopping, but even that is hindered as we have acres and acres of new seeding and barley that need to go in the bag, but they don't want to rut the wet fields all up. This could be a rough year if the weather doesn't change.

Anyhow, yesterday, my delicious, wonderful, restful, peaceful, nasty-old-lady-calming morning and mid day off, I needed to pick some squash for dinner....get some laundry off the line...knock down more brush so I can see the long lawn from the big windows (the better to laugh and wonder at the grey foxes). I knew full well and consciously that I needed to do these things. Instead I parked in my Sunday chair with a couple of good books and drank lemon ginger tea. Silly me, I should have gone out and gotten my chores done.

Instead this gully washer arrived. It sloshed the squash, lashed the laundry and beat the brush until all were soaked beyond redemption (or at least beyond redeeming them yesterday). I couldn't believe that the sun was shining brightly half a mile away in town, while we were getting dumped on. Yeah, those are rain drops rolling off the sitting porch roof. (Notice that I will jump out of my chair, dump the book and run for the camera even when I won't do chores.)

It needs to dry up for a while here, but the hurricanes hitting the gulf coast will probably be here in a couple of days. Gah!!


This short video shows just how hard it was raining. We got perhaps an hour of rain this hard in a a series of several storms. Dang! I wish it would go rain like this on the many farmers and ranchers on this continent that need it!


Hay Weather (or not)

Senior moment

Who is that handsome boy playing tympani?

And singing in the chorus?

If you don't know, don't feel bad...evidently the band director doesn't either. There are three sections in our high school band, concert, wind ensemble and jazz band. It is a time honored tradition at our school for seniors to be acknowledged during their final concert. In fact Alan wanted to drop band this year and fill that slot in his schedule with something more useful for college. I encouraged him to stay in so he could enjoy his moment of glory as a senior with 8 years of percussion behind him. He did so.

Then last night, the director who shall remain nameless, gushed all over how wonderful the seniors in jazz band were. Raved long and loud about the seniors in wind ensembles. They took bows and got buckets of applause and I am sure were delighted with the attention they received.
And then, completely, totally (and unfixably-this is their LAST ever high school concert after all) forgot the three seniors in the concert band.

We waited and waited for their special moment but, oops, no such luck. They just filed offstage unnoticed. I won't get into the way this particular director has taken what used to be a fun music program and made it technically excellent, yet miserably boring, (instrument of torture comes to mind) for the audience. He likes that weird kinda music and he is the boss. We can suffer through a few hours of really painful music a couple times a year; we are after all adults and all....but to slight kids who have been in band for so many years, since before he was even hired. Well, to me that is inexcusable.

The highlight of the night was wonderful though. Alan's good friends' younger brother (you didn't hear about the helping with the sneaking of a piano into their house for him for Christmas this year because I had to keep Alan's part in that operation a secret for obvious reasons) COMPOSED one of the numbers last night! And it was awesome! One of the two best pieces all night. Lively, dramatic, exciting! (Everything the rest of the program wasn't...no slight to the kids, they play very well. It is just the directors taste in music that hurts.) The young composer got a standing ovation and he richly deserved it!
Then he went on to accompany the mixed chorus on piano completely from memory! Wow!

Anyhow, here is MY salute to 8 years in band. Hey, Alan, we won't forget and you or Anne or Rickie. As always you looked and sounded great last night. Good job!

More Thurwood

January 8, 1874

Foggy and warm and it rained a little and I went up to Dunckels and in the afternoon it rained and got windy and cold and that is all.
3 eggs for today

Here in 2008 at Northview Farm the weather fellas are also predicting a warm day. I am predicting more grey hair, as I take Becky out driving every day, praying as we go. She needs her driver's license. I need a tranquilizer.


When that is done there is the work on the Census of Agriculture, which we are required to fill out. It is where all those NASS numbers come from but it is HARD (warning pdf file) and it makes me whiny. It says that it takes fifty minutes per response. I don't know if that means per question...there are pages and pages, per page, yep, a lot of them, or for the whole questionnaire. All I know it that I worked on it all afternoon yesterday and it isn't done yet. Wish the government didn't expect us to do their bookkeeping for them.

We also got news that our USPH inspection is coming up, which requires that we offer for consideration a barn that is somewhere near as clean as the set of ER. (Check that link out and imagine complying in a 200 year old barn full of unhousebroken animals, and run by men of the "drop it where you use it" school of tool care. Thank God for Liz is all I gotta say.) We knew that was in the offing and have been working on it, but it is no fun at all.

And then there is the Top Scan thing from Homeland Security. Farm Bureau has been frantically working to get farms exempted from having to fill one out (we have fertilizer and propane and such on hand and may be terrorists or terrorist targets). Even with the information they are sending me in almost daily emails, I have no clue whether we have to fill one out or not. Or how.This sort of snuck in under my farm politics and regulation radar (I get perhaps fifty or sixty emails and newsletters a week on farm policy, agricultural news and commentary and visit many sites that compile such data. Never heard of this one until last week. Since the deadline for compliance, once you figure out whether you have to comply is January 22 that is cutting it pretty close.)

Tax time looms. (Numberwise I need you....He-e-e-e-el-l-pppppp!!!!!) The books must be put in order. New files set up for 2008. All my mistakes of 2007 found and fixed. Arggghhhh!!!

I envy Charlie. I don't exactly want to live without electricity. I would miss my computer. However, I already take care of farm animals every day and I already have to keep warm with wood and hard work. We already grow a lot of our own food, and I do know how to live without modern conveniences having once resided in an itty bitty cabin in the woods, minus most of them.
I would love to forgo all the above government intrusion into our lives and business in trade for the ability to just do the work....you know, feed the cows, milk the cows, grow the food. I'll bet nobody told Charlie how tight his milkhouse door had to be or how to turn his calf buckets upside down.

We never got rich and missed out on Disney World

Our Liz is about to graduate from college with a Bachelor of Technology degree. She has to finish an internship working on another farm and then she is done. Since she started college, four long and challenging years ago, she has wanted to come home and work into the family business with an eye to taking over. She has worked here on the farm since she was a toddler, including during all those years in college. (As have her siblings.) She has still maintained a spot on the Dean's List the whole time, as well as a membership in Phi Theta Cappa, and taken as many as 24 credits at a time.
Yeah, we're proud of her.


And yeah, we would love to have her come home to farm. (Any and all of the kids are welcome if they can work out a way to work together.) There have been plentiful times when we thought eagerly of retiring, but the place was kept afloat so we could take over and it only seems right to try to do the same for the next generation.


Wouldn't you think that the profs at an ag and tech school would be delighted to see her join us? Wouldn't you expect them to love to send young adults home to continue the family farm?
That is certainly what I expected.


However, for weeks, months even, Liz's teachers have been berating her for throwing her life and education away by coming home, especially since we are a small and not particularly outstanding farm. Discussion has become quite heated. All the many ways we might fail or she might fail have been pointed out. Her skill at breeding show cattle has been called into question (there have been several critters with the Frieland prefix that stood grand champion over the years-all of them hers). Her intelligence has been belittled. (That "dumb farmer" stereotype again). One teacher pointed out today that when she marries and has children she will want enough money to take them to Disney World and can't make it on a small farm.


And that, right there, just nailed me to the wall. Disney World! As if that were the gold standard of pleasure and achievement. The be-all-end-all epitome of American existence.

Although my folks ran an antique shop and book store when I was a young 'un, the boss comes from untold generations of farmers (we literally don't know how many). This farm itself is well over sixty years old and our kids are the third generation at this location. (The great grandparents had another farm on the other side of town.) We both grew up somewhat less than wealthy by conventional standards and never made it to Disney World. Can you imagine that? And then we went ahead and raised our kids the same way.

I know I should feel the depths of cultural deprivation over the Disney issue but actually I was perversely proud when Liz and Becky were in the lower grades and failed a test based on their cultural knowledge (they didn't know all the characters from the Little Mermaid or some other Disney flavor of the day movie.)


The boss and I both grew up showing at the county fair and thinking that was pretty big stuff. We have had visitors sneer at that, but darn, it really WAS fun. So we made sure our kids got to do it too.

When things got tight when they were small, instead of hopping on a plane for a warm climate and a theme park, we took "nature walk" mini vacations hiking around the farm. If one of us couldn't go their grandpa took them. They learned to recognize real birds and animals, to read tracks and know trees and plants. (Too bad about missing Minnie and Mickey, but they got to see robins and green frogs instead.) When we had time we took them hunting brachiopod fossils in Schoharie, digging Herkimer diamonds or hit the Old Stone Fort Museum or the NY State Museum. Or Blue Mountain Lake Museum. Or the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown. Poor deprived little things.

They missed out on jaded people dressed up as imaginary characters, and million-dollar thrill rides, and had to make do with piddly little tractor, horse and pick up truck rides (and cow rides sometimes). They had to suffer with just time with their folks and the grandparents...every day. However, they did get the chance to know that what they did every day mattered. Not only did their help mean a lot to us, but every time one of them picked up a shovel, taught a new calf to drink from a bucket, or drove the tractor out to rake hay they were helping feed the world.


To me, that stacks up pretty good against flying down to Disney World, but then I am not much of a sophisticate, so I could surely be wrong. And we certainly may fail, Liz or no Liz. Farming is tough stuff, no matter whether you have fifty cows or ten thousand. (The challenges are different, but I know I would much rather get up every morning and go out and milk our fifty than be the owner of a 10,000 cow place when the INS shows up and there is nobody left on the place to milk them at all.)


Anyhow, I personally can't wait until Liz is done with her education and home farming with us. If the farm fails, she has that degree to fall back on. If it succeeds, well, good, maybe she can afford to take her future children to Disney World.
If they even want to go.

Too good to be true

I don't think I have said too much about our ongoing situation with our milk truck driver. It has been just one of those things. Way back in the spring our regular guy got hurt and a substitute began to pick up the milk. (The milk truck picks up every other day here at Northview, which is pretty much the norm for all but the largest farms.)


We always got along wonderfully with our regular driver and his son-in-law, who was his relief driver. They were the kind of guys who glanced in the barn now and then and if they saw something amiss, they dealt with it. For example we left one day to go to the farm show in Syracuse. Chores were done and everything was ship shape when we left. We thought. However, Dale took a look in the barn and there were little twin heifers behind old Zinnia, who had calved early. He knew we were away and put them up in front of their mama where they were safe. It wasn't his job, but he took care of it anyhow.


Dale always picked us up at 9:30 in the morning. It was no problem to be done by then. (It takes at least a couple of hours to feed grain, set up the milkers and to actually milk the cows. By the time you factor in actually getting up, getting dressed, making coffee, letting the dogs out and walking to the barn, you have to get up pretty darned early even to be done and the milk cooled by then.)


At first the new guy did the same. We missed Dale, but what could we do? Then he started showing up at 8:30. Then 7:30. Now we were running into difficulties. The milk was still warm when he was pumping it into the truck. (Illegal and wrong.) Still, it was summer and with the kids home we could be done milking by then. So, of course, he backed it up to 6:30. Terrific. Sometimes if we have mechanical problems or a calf to pull, that is when we START! We were starting earlier and earlier and still not being done before he came in. It was pretty frustrating.


We couldn't wait to milk until after he picked up either. Before we can milk again after milk is picked up the tank has to be washed. It takes an hour, which made us too late to milk 12 hours later at night. There were any number of other issues, such as him hooking up the hose to the tank before the milk was measured, breaking the tank washer, and the milk being warm so we got high bacteria counts that we didn't deserve. Still, we soldiered along and compromised at being done at 7:30. He still pulled in at 6:45, but everybody just put up with it all.


Then Monday he didn't show up. He had been promising for six months or so that he would be done driving the first of December since he has a winter job. When another guy picked us up at 9:30 we were absolutely ecstatic. We practically handed out cigars. We figured he had quit early and we could go back to our normal milking hours of 6 or so in the morning and 5:30 at night (which is when we have been milking anyhow, stretching the days out very l-o-o-o-o-n-g.) Happy, happy, happy!


However, just as we were getting ready to put the milkers on at 6:37 this morning, we heard the rumble of the tanker truck down below the gate. We had to shut down, let him draw off the milk, and wash the tank, before we could milk. It put us hours behind and I felt like kicking the wall!
Seems he couldn't get up the driveway Monday because of the ice, so Tyler got the milk. (This is another issue if he keeps driving since the boss can't add another task, sanding the driveway, to our already crowded race to get done before he gets here.)


Woe is me!

Ear tags and disease

Isn't it amazing that the Holstein Association is in favor of national animal ID?
(Well, no, it isn't all that surprising....They maintain a large and lucrative animal database. They make money by identifying animals. Why wouldn't they support it?) It aggravates me to see them pontificate like this no end though. They prey on the ignorance of the general public to make their point of view seem like the right one. I disagree. Pretty strongly, in fact. England has one of the most restrictive animal ID systems in existence. They still have outbreaks of horrific animal diseases. Ear tags don't stop them.

I defy the proponents of NAIS to explain to me how putting expensive ear tags in cows will stop the spread of foot and mouth disease should it come here to the USA. It blows on the wind, flows with the water, is spread by birds, animals, car tires, and people. You could ear tag every domestic animal in the country and it would still do the same thing. Oh, the government says they could find the animals quicker to "do something about it" (read kill cows...the Brits killed a number of herds that didn't even turn out to have the disease. Tough luck for the cows and farmers). Maybe they could find cows faster. However, ear tagging my cows wouldn't do a darned thing to stop the dozens of deer that ramble all over our farm..and the neighbors' farms...and the Amish farms. It won't stop the wind, or the water, the Thruway or the starlings. It won't stop the disease either.