By
Celeste Bishop
The National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS Agricultural Census) is due February 4th and people are scratching their heads wondering why they received the census and what to do with it. The most popular thought is to throw it in the waste basket but that is a mistake unless you are prepared to suffer the consequences.
Do I have to fill out the Agricultural Census? Continue reading 
Fair Use Access National Geographic
By Celeste Bishop
A lesson in compliance was not something that I was seeking one fine day I went to visit Mt St. Helen’s. It had been a long time since I had visited the mountain where as a youth I had hiked and camped. Today the mountain has a very different landscape, in more ways than one. As I drove up to the Visitor Center I marveled at the bleak terrain that had once been filled with lush towering trees, pure lakes and streams I parked the car and went inside to view the Visitor Center. At the door a stern looking Park Ranger, a job I had once aspired to obtain, looked up and demanded a fee to use the Center. I handed her the proper amount and she handed me an arm bracelet. I responded, “I don’t do arm bracelet’s.” She barked back in Gestapo fashion, “WE MUST ENSURE COMPLIANCE!” To use ‘Park’ (paid for by We the People) one must reexamine ones moral and ethical ground.
So, too, most of us have found as we engage in opposing Traceability that COMPLIANCE is the USDA’s bottom line. Compliance towards unhealthy agri-business and their greedy and deadly agricultural practices. Continue reading
Washington State Voluntary NAIS has been introduced:
“This is fantastic news,” said one Washington NoNAIS person upon hearing that House Bill (HB) 2086 was read this morning and assigned to the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, and also that Senate Bill (SB) 5956 was read this morning and introduced to the Senate Agricultural and Rural Economic Development Committee at 10:30 this morning.
A team of three hit the Capital last Monday representing three impacted sectors: a Realtor, a livestock auctioneer, and a public relations manager. This team of three also represented the following species: bovine, horses, goats and poultry. With great enthusiasm and support on Friday proposed legislation regarding, “Voluntary participation in the National Animal Identification Systemâ€, known as NAIS, went into play in the Senate and the House.
Representative Shelly Short sponsored HB 2086.
Senator Mark Schoesler sponsored SB 5956.
(Please take time to thank these Legislator’s)
Both bills are located on the www.nonaiswa.org website. The proposed legislation language is identical, and is commonly referred to as Companion Bill set.
February 20th is our cutoff date for both HB 2086 and SB 5956. The Agricultural Committee Chairs must decide to hold a public hearing and move HB 2086 and SB 5956 by February 20th or the bill(s) die in committee.
The chairman of the Senate Ag Committee is Senator Brian Hatfield:
Email: hatfield.brian@leg.wa.gov
Phone: (360) 786-7636
The chair of the House Ag Committee is Representative Brian Blake.
Email: blake.brian@leg.wa.gov
Phone: (360) 786-7870
We Need Your Help!
NOW is the time we need your help! The team of three spent the entire last week in Olympia ~ 5 days ~ meeting with our representatives, educating, asking for support, asking for sponsors of these bills. NOW IT IS UP TO YOU…
Proposed Legislation, HB 2086 & SB 5956 Status
HB 2086 and SB 5956 are new fresh new bills with new prime sponsors and new supporters. It is important to note that HB 2086 is not HB 1151. Due to the tremendous emotion and lack of unity unfortunately HB 1151 became a bad memory for many and so it was necessary to bring a squeaky clean and fresh bill with a unified support base to our Representatives and Senators. Continue reading
DHS Rolls Out “Voluntary National Emergency Preparedness Accreditation Program” for Private Sector Entities
The handwriting is on the wall with the ‘voluntary’ enlistment of good-hearted citizens across America. The citizen first volunteers in his or her area of expertise. To volunteer one must first hand over some of one’s private information. The volunteer’s information is then put into a ‘secure’ but swap n’ share database. Every program must have standards so guidelines are adopted to guarantee uniformity and the volunteer finds himself or herself being put into a position of forced compliance. This process is known as incremental socialism where quality control deteriorates and the strong arm of the government rules. A new government program was instituted known as the “Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Accreditation and Certification Program, Public Law 110-53 and on July 30, 2008 DHS signed an agreement with ANSI-ASQ to establish and oversee the development and implementation of accreditation and certification.
The drive to voluntary service has been slowly gaining momentum for the last century with a particular emphasis in the last 15 years. In the name of emergency preparedness and resiliency will we see all employment sectors become accredited and certified volunteer based? Can we envision a day when a farmer will need to be certified and accredited and be required to voluntarily provide food for the good of the community? Will farmers be so burned by regulations and requirements that they throw up their hands and give up? Food for thought. Continue reading
This is from the year 2000. Currently it is much more complex with increased inter-agency involvement.
INTRODUCTION
Over the last several years, there has been an increase in reported outbreaks of foodborne illness associated with both domestic and imported fresh fruits and vegetables. These outbreaks have raised concern for the safety of fresh fruits and vegetables that are not processed to reduce or eliminate pathogens.
There are two primary reasons for conducting a farm investigation:
1. an outbreak and trace back investigation that implicated the farm and related operations
2. follow-up to a positive produce sample. Prior to implicating the farming operation, all other possible sources of contamination in the distribution chain should have been fully investigated.
Farm investigations are just one aspect of FDA’s produce safety efforts, which also include domestic and international education and outreach in Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs). These efforts are intended to improve agricultural practices to reduce risks of microbial contamination of fresh fruits and vegetables. These ongoing efforts involve cooperation and collaboration with industry and trade associations, academia, and other government agencies. Continue reading
The term quarantine elicits a negative connotation that most of us shy away from. The fact of the matter the notion of quarantine is unpalatable so how do decision-makers make the concept socially acceptable?
The testing ground to see what works and what does not began with the Wild-land Project in the environmental movement. Social engineers applied the science know as ‘fuzzy math’ to contentious issues. Fuzzy math takes an ideology and applies an algorithm to the issue. Through this mathematical mechanism an incremental plan is formulated to get your ideology changed. For instance you goal is to make the mountains off limits to human activity. You have a comment period and record peoples objections. You then apply the algorithm which will give you the plan to incrementally change people’s perception of wilderness areas. One might first put up a small gate, then a larger gate, then add cameras, the add patrols, add warning signs, lastly incrementally make the distance between the wilderness area and humans larger and larger. Tests reveal after time people will look at the wilderness areas, but in a Pavlovian response, not even think of going near the off limit areas.
Link: Wild-lands Fuzzy Math
This type of model is now being applied to the concept of quarantine. This week a series of social distancing articles were posted online. The whole premise of biosecurity is to distance the disease including the farm, ill person or whatever needs to be quarantined from the others. The tool of fear of disease is utilized to ensure compliance. Unfortunately some interesting dynamics occur when social distancing or quarantine occurs. Studies in the mid-twentieth century showed that humans and animals alike suffered various types of trauma due to the isolation (quarantine) factor.
The Pit of Despair: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_of_despair
Implementation of Social Distancing (Quarantine)
BMC Public Health 2008, 8:61doi:10.1186/1471-2458-8-61
| Published: | 14 February 2008 |
Influenza is a viral infection that primarily spreads via fluid droplets from an infected persons coughs and sneezes to others nearby. Social contact networks and the way people interact within them are thus important to its spread. We developed a method to characterize the social contact network for the potential transmission of influenza and then applied the method to school aged children and teenagers.
Conclusions
High-school students may form the local transmission backbone of the next pandemic. Closing schools and keeping students at home during a pandemic would remove the transmission potential within these ages and could be effective at thwarting its spread within a community. Social contact networks characterized as groups and public activities with the time, level of contact and primary links within each, yields a comprehensive view, which if extended to all ages, would allow design of effective community containment for pandemic influenza.
1School of Nursing and 2Department of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
Potential conflicts of interest: none reported.
Financial support: supplement sponsorship is detailed in the Acknowledgments.
This article examines the role of stigma in social and institutional responses to infectious disease emergencies, to better understand and minimize these dynamics in the event of a pandemic of virulent influenza. In addition to their impact on human suffering, fear and stigma can seriously delay detection and treatment efforts, cooperation with contact tracing and isolation measures, and the effective distribution of resources for the prevention and control of infectious diseases. These dynamics are illustrated by the Indian plague epidemic of 1994, which occurred in a region where H5N1 influenza has been detected recently. Public fear and stigma also played a significant role in the social and institutional responses to the 1918 influenza pandemic. These historical models provide important lessons for pandemic preparedness and global health policy.
The Journal of Infectious Diseases2008;197:S1S3
1Department of Anthropology, 2John F. Kennedy School of Government, and 3Harvard Asia Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, and 4Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and 5Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
Potential conflicts of interest: none reported.
Presented in part: Harvard University Asian Flus and Avian Influenza Workshop, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 8–10 December 2006.
Financial support: supplement sponsorship is detailed in the Acknowledgments.
The Harvard University Asian Flus and Avian Influenza Workshop, held in December 2006, introduced a biosocial approach to the preparation for and control of pandemics. A biosocial approach brings together the biological and social sciences to develop an integrative, collaborative response to the threat of pandemic influenza. The articles in this supplement provide a representative sampling of some of the ways in which the workshop worked toward this biosocial vision. These articles address the historical “siting†of epidemics, political and structural pandemic preparedness in China, lessons to be taken from the 1976 “swine flu affair,†possibilities for genetic engineering as an alternative to poultry vaccination, issues to be considered in the control of infectious disease in swine and avian species, the ecology of influenza in migratory birds, and issues of stigma and trust during the control of epidemics. The need to build public trust and public health infrastructure is one of the primary messages of this collection.
WSDA announced an enforcement crackdown on those not complying with pesticide regulations. Pesticides are products that do need regulation. Farmers do not need the same stringent regulations.
What can be gleaned from this situation and future scenarios that might include non-compliance to the implementation of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS)?
From the WSDA Press Release:
Penalty matrix used by WSDA to levy fines and suspensions
A penalty matrix is used to ensure penalties are uniform and fair. The matrix takes into account the seriousness of the violation, whether it is a first or a repeat offense, and whether there are any aggravating or mitigating factors involved. Larger penalties often reflect repeat offenses or multiple violations within the same incident.
(For those who attended the last WSDA Regulatory hearing we learned that this was modelled after the traffic infraction matrix which has absolutely nothing to do with agriculture. WSDA just adapted the transportation model.)
During the third quarter of 2007, the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) issued fines totaling $4,350 and imposed license suspensions for violations of state pesticide laws and rules.
It appears as though the WSDA reports quarterly and that fines are issued and if one has a license with WSDA it could be suspended if you are not in full compliance.)
From the trenches,
Celeste
The handwriting was on the wall. The National Animal Identification System known as the NAIS is only one of many tools to control the food supply. Compliance and enforcement are key tool for total food control. As we advance towards that end new tools are coming on board. With the new *itools* a person doesn’t even have to think, you can just plug in all your property & farm information and voila, it will tell you what you need to accomplish to be compliant.
From the ARS to you:
“Raising a crop is hard enough without worrying about paperwork. Now, a new record-keeping tool developed by the Agricultural Research Service allows farmers to quickly enter information about their land, crops and management methods.
The “iFARM Record Keeper” can manipulate farm management information into multiple formats without requiring producers to enter data more than once, leading to improved efficiency, accuracy and organization.
As a farmer enters management information into the Record Keeper, the spreadsheet immediately converts it into a variety of diverse formats, such as those required for the farmer’s home state’s restricted-use pesticide report and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services’s Conservation Plan.
The Record Keeper was developed by ARS scientist’s and a technician in collaboration with the Colorado Association of Wheat Growers, whose members wanted a simple, user-friendly record-keeping system. It is one of a suite of decision support tools being developed by scientists in the ARS Agricultural Systems Research Unit at Fort Collins, Colo.
Palic and Dunn also collaborated with ARS research leader and the University of Nebraska economist Paul Burgener to enhance a spreadsheet program originally developed by Vigil for evaluating simple farm economics. The expanded program, called iFEAT (iFARM Economic Analysis Tool), can help landlords and tenants assess, among other things, the economic outcomes of different farm leasing arrangements and management decisions.
For example, a farmer might be trying to decide which lease arrangement would be more beneficial to him: a cash lease, in which the tenant pays the landlord a set amount and assumes all the risks but keeps all the crop revenue, or a crop-share lease. In the Great Plains and other areas of the United States where leasing is common, choosing an appropriate leasing arrangement is key to economic success.
iFEAT is a user-friendly spreadsheet tool for helping no-till farmers—who often have higher fertilizer costs—quickly assess the economic benefits of various leasing and management options. The spreadsheet provides information on costs and net returns for different management alternatives, enabling them to assess the potential economic outcomes of management changes.
Both tools—iFEAT and the Record Keeper—can inform and guide growers’ management decisions.”
From the trenches,
Celeste