The Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance (FARFA) is leading the fight to save family farms and individuals from expensive and unnecessary government regulation.  Help us protect our food supply and our liberties!

The National Animal Identification System ("NAIS") poses a serious threat to all farmers, ranchers, livestock owners, and companion-animal owners, whether they are organic or conventional, small or large, involved with animals for business or for pleasure. If it is made mandatory, every person with even one horse, cow, chicken, pig, goat, sheep, or virtually any other livestock animal on their premises will be required to register their homes and property into a database and subject their property and animals to government surveillance.

Under the current plans, each animal would have to be identified and physically tagged, in many cases with radio frequency tags or microchips.  Factory farms of chickens and swine would be able to identify whole groups of animals with one number, but most regular farmers and individuals would have to identify each animal individually.  “Events” in the animal’s life would have to be reported within 24 hours.  All of this information will be kept in databases by the state government or private companies, while the federal government will have the right to access the databases as it deems necessary. 

Although NAIS is voluntary right now in most States, and there are no federal regulations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has stated that it wants every single person who owns even one animal to be involved by 2009. The USDA is funding mandatory and coercive programs in some States, and the program is likely to continue expanding unless Congress and State legislatures put a stop to it.