NAIS/FEAR
Revisiting the proposed Animal ID, Robbin suggests that the program might be more palatable for producers that if in return for all the tagging and record keeping, we would be informed as to how our beef carcasses graded. Such information would be invaluable when it comes to the retention of cows and the selection of bulls – information beneficial, hopefully, to the entire industry – perhaps even an edge as we compete in a world beef market.
Failure of proponents to mention or offer this obvious and potential benefit for producers, feeders, packers, consumers and exporters implies that something else is driving this train, that political tunnel vision has, once again, missed the hands-on application of this program.
I believe the driving wheel is FEAR. Congress has been thoroughly briefed on our vulnerability to terrorist attacks, and the ID program would theoretically make isolating and quarantining segments of the industry quicker and easier. I don’t know how to quantify and graph FEAR, but in the bigger picture, I’m confident that we’re at an all-time high in this country, surpassing Nikita Khrushchev’s table-pounding episode in the 60s when backyard bomb shelters were in vogue.
Herders and horsemen know how fear works, how it centers and builds and how difficult it is to overcome. Used only as a last resort, most work towards a foundation of trust instead. Employing the metaphor of a herd of citizens, little wonder that our political cowboys have the populace so wild-eyed today. Afraid of our food and water, one might consider that we’re being baited into a new corral.
O!
How vain and vile a passion is this fear!
What base uncomely things it makes men do.
- Ben Johnson, 1603 (“Sejanus His Fall”)
Dry Creek Sunset
December 28, 2006