Animal ID and School Lunches, Part II

Yesterday I mentioned the inadequacy of USDA’s animal ID system, the National Animal Identification System (NAIS).  A provision in the House Agriculture Appropriations bill currently before Congress requires the School Lunch Program administered by USDA to only purchase meat from livestock producers registered with NAIS.

This provision is being championed as a “food safety” measure, a disingenuous claim at best.  NAIS has little to do with food safety- something even USDA admits.  From USDA’s website:

“Implementation of NAIS will support state and federal animal disease monitoring and surveillance through the rapid tracing of infected and exposed animals during animal disease outbreaks. Additional benefits of NAIS include enhanced consumer confidence in the health of U.S. livestock and associated products and improved productivity management for producers.” (http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/newsroom/news_2005-11-09.shtml)

As you might notice, public health is not mentioned.  That’s because NAIS stops at the packing plant door- there is no requirement to trace the meat during production.  Given that most contamination resulting in food recalls (and people getting sick) is a result of improper production practices you can start to see how this isn’t about public health.  If a person is sickened eating tainted meat, NAIS cannot help in identifying which animal actually caused the disease (if, in fact, there is a particular animal at fault) because during production meat from hundreds of animals is mixed together- and NAIS does nothing to address this problem.

I suppose one could argue that NAIS may benefit public health if you detect the disease before the animal is slaughtered.  But that’s not all that big of a priority for USDA either- they’ve repeatedly tried to prevent meatpackers from testing every cow they purchase for mad cow disease. 

Claiming involvement in NAIS will somehow result in safer food for the school lunch program is simply wrong.  Moreover, forcing those selling to schools to participate in this fatally flawed program could well result in less locally sourced, sustainably produced meat for schools.

Farm-to-school programs may be in their infancy on a national scale, but they represent an enormous opportunity for small farms and ranches. 

First, schools are locally controlled- providing an excellent opportunity for local citizens to insist upon locally-sourced foods.  And the increased volumes involved in such institutional purchases can provide the incentive for a producer to get into sustainable, humane production practices- especially when compared to the often fluctuating demand from farmers markets, etc.  Institutional purchasing has the potential to provide the sort of reliable demand that could really revitalize local processing capacity- both for meat and other food products- something that Tom Philpott has correctly identified as one of the single largest obstacles to a true local food system.  Placing yet another obstacle in front of farm-to-school programs will inevitably result in less local food in our schools.

In the bigger picture, requiring schools to buy meat from NAIS producers will absolutely favor the largest, most vertically-integrated meatpackers and CAFO operators.  Why?  Because they’re the ones that can guarantee large quantities of meat sourced from NAIS producers.  When hundreds or thousands of animals go into a ground beef production run, only the largest meatpackers can absolutely guarantee that every single one of those animals was tagged in NAIS- and those animals will be bought from giant CAFOs, whose costs to participate in NAIS are far lower than the small producer (the “lot tagging” I mentioned yesterday).  Small producers facing higher costs (and particularly much more burdensome paperwork requirements associated with NAIS) will face a big hurdle to participate, and if they don't register with NAIS the meatpacker selling to the School Lunch Program will not buy their animals at all.

So what we have is a bureaucratic requirement that does little to protect public health and is yet another federal policy that will encourage the consolidation and concentration of agriculture- pushing us even further from a truly sustainable, local food system.  And it will put a serious damper on the farm-to-school programs that could be a boon to small farms and ranches.  And let’s not even think what will happen to these markets if they extend this horribly constructed initiative to fruits and veggies.

All this is not to say the goals of NAIS are a complete waste.  There are compelling reasons to track livestock in this country.  But the current NAIS structure is unworkable and potentially devastating to small farms.  And this proposed requirement is a yet another back door effort to mandate a flawed animal ID system that will propel us even further into the factory farm future.