Opinion

To the Editor:

Make no mistake about what is going on with NAIS and IDME in Maine. USDA officials and “industry giants” are leading consumers to believe with provocative and dramatical articles that deadly diseases like mad cow disease and avian flu are about to swoop down to devour us at a moment's notice. USDA knows and counts on people’s strong reaction to that propaganda. Does the truth matter? The truth is, when you really look, you will find out that NAIS will, if we let it, tag each and every individual domesticated livestock animal that lives on any type of premise, be it a ranch with 10,000 head of cattle or backyard chicken coop with one or two chicken in it. So you say, that’s ridiculous! Yes, I agree, it is ludicrous. But they will do it, if “we the people” don’t say no and mean it.

We are farmers. We care for the land and for our livestock. It is our chosen work. And it defines us in glorious ways, but only to ourselves and with others of our persuasion. Not to the wider public, not to the masses of men and women. Not today. Today we are quaint anachronisms as disconnected from their view of the landscape and their forkful of food as the disconnect they feel with self-reliance. For the longest time we have enjoyed the assurance that has come from our own working intimacy with the practical and achievable notions of self-sufficiency. We have enjoyed our freedoms. We could plant most anything we wished. We could parent strains of livestock as we choose. We have been free and not always fully grateful for that freedom. Oft' times it would take a broadside, a sneak attack, a terrible calamity for us to rise up and realize that the core of who and what we are is deserving of our best efforts at self-preservation. When we feel something or someone tearing at our middle, if it's not too late, we do rally to save our farms, our farming and ourselves.