How do you say No NAIS in Japanese?

The USDA and the agricultural business giants have been crafting a national animal identification scheme that threatens the freedoms of the citizens of the United States of America. The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) is the creation of various businesses, such as Monsanto Company, to monopolize American food production by using fear tactics to advance their agenda. The NAIS scheme was not created by any act of our government. NAIS is merely a presumptuous bureaucratic dictate.

In the late 1970s, Monsanto developed a longer-term strategy that would enable it to reduce its dependence on low-return petroleum-based products. A central feature of the strategy involved an increase in activity in the areas of nutritional chemicals and agricultural products and a move into the new area of health care. Biotechnology, particularly genetic engineering, was attractive since it affected all three of these areas. In 1979 Monsanto hired Dr. Howard A. Schneiderman, a biochemist from the University of California, Irvine, who became a senior Vice-President and Chief Scientist in charge of the Corporate Research and Development Division. It was Schneiderman who spearheaded the company's drive into biotechnology and genetic engineering. To facilitate its move into new areas, the company's R&D budget was increased considerably, from 2.6% of sales in 1979 to 5% in 1983 and 7% in 1985 (Monsanto, 1985). In 1985, 57% of R&D expenditure was in the area of life sciences. With 1985 sales of $6,747 million, the R&D budget for 1986 is around $470 million, implying a research budget of about $270 million in the life sciences. Monsanto has followed a number of paths in its attempt to build its biotechnology-related capabilities. To begin with, Monsanto has established links with universities. Most important of these has been a link with the School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis. Monsanto provided the university with $23.5 million over five years in return for cooperative research projects in biotechnology. One benefit the company has received from this relationship is G.D. Searle & Co.'s development of atrial peptides, which control high blood pressure; these compounds were originally isolated and identified by Professor Philip Needleman, Head of the Pharmacology Department at the University. Monsanto has signed research agreements with a number of other universities, including Harvard, Oxford, and Rockefeller Universities. The company's university links were the subject of a congressional enquiry, headed by then Congressman Al Gore, which concluded that the relationship was not detrimental to the university system.

The company's univeristy links also show an interesting intellectual property rights issue. Example, with the Monsanto-Washington University link is intended to facilitate cooperative work between company and university scientists working collaboratively on research projects. An eight-member advisory committee divided equally between Monsanto researchers and Washington University faculty makes the final decision regarding research funding. The agreement stipulates that 30% of the research will be basic research, while 70% will be research directly applicable to human disease. The United States Congress, Office of Technology Assessment Report on Biotechnology (1984) summarized the provisions regarding intellectual property rights: 'Washington University faculty members will be at liberty to publish results of any research done under the Monsanto funding. Monsanto will exercise the right of prior review of draft materials, because they may contain potentially patentable technical developments. If they do, Monsanto can request a delay of submission for publication or other public disclosure in order to begin the patent process'. Patent rights will be retained by Washington University but Monsanto will have exclusive rights to licences. If Monsanto chooses not to license a patent then the university will be free to issue the licence to others. Royalties will go to Washington University and not to the individual researchers, but will normally go to their laboratory.

Monsanto then gives the universities access to their vast corporate digital library initiatives. Monsanto's online solution was a pioneering effort that provides a vast knowledge sharing through the Internet that includes data and solutions for:

Along with universities, Monsanto has been linking with biotechnology firms through acquisition and mergers, marketing agreements, contractual agreements to provide assets, and joint ventures.

One such company Monsanto has developed a relationship with is Mitsubishi Pharma Corp. Mitsubishi itself has an interesting corporate history. The smaller businesses that eventually merged into Mitsubishi Pharma Corporation are worth mentioning.

The company merged into Yoshitomi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd On April 1, 1998, and renamed to Welfide Corporation on April 1, 2000. Finally Welfide Corp. and Mitsubishi-Tokyo Pharmaceutical Inc. were mereged to form Mitsubishi Pharma Corp. on October 1, 2001.

Japan's HIV-tainted blood scandal, known in Japanese as, yakugai eizu jiken, refers between one and two thousand cases in the 1980s in which Japanese patients with haemophilia contracted HIV via tainted blood products. The man that was found guilty of professional negligence resulting in these deaths, Matsushita Renzo, former head of the Ministry of Health and Welfare's Pharmaceutical Affairs Bureaum, became president of Green Cross and after serving his jail time.

The term "nanotechnology" was named in 1974 by Tokyo Science University professor Norio Taniguchi, author of "Nanotechnology: Integrated Processing Systems for Ultra-Precision and Ultra-Fine Products".

Genes and the products of genetic engineering can be patented and owned. In 1980, two federal landmark decisions influenced the business side of biotechnology. A Supreme Court ruling allowed patents to be granted for genetically engineered organisms, processes of transforming cells and expressing proteins, and genes themselves. More recently, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a Patent Office decision and ruled that DNA sequences that code for particular proteins are patentable. The Bayh Dole Act rules that all intellectual property resulting from federal funding resides in the university, rather than in the government. Unless, the univeristy link is linked to funding by a company, such as Monsanto.

This is what is fueling the drive for a major restructuring of the agriculture, food, and fiber industries. The Bio and now Nanotechnology sciences have presented fundamental problems for the protection of intellectual property rights. As the main OECD publication on patent protection has put it (Beier et al., 1985):
"In the past the patent system rested safely on a semantically clear [and] objectively defensible separation between (patentable) invention' and (non-patentable) 'discovery'. The recent development of biotechnology where some scientific discoveries could be turned into commercial products almost immediately has blurred this separation. This may have far-reaching legal and practical consequences."

Monsanto has sued hundreds of farmers for saving gene-altered seeds from each year's harvest to replant their fields the following season -- a practice farmers have followed for years. In fact, three-quarters of the world's growers are subsistence farmers who rely on saved seed. Monsanto claims "seed piracy" and said replanting the company's patented, gene-altered seeds violates a three-year-old company rule requiring that farmers buy the seeds fresh every year. Monsanto does not sell its engineered seeds in the traditional sense but "leases" them, in effect, for one time use only.

Monsanto and other agricultural business giants have successfully laid the ground work to implement a "lease" on all of the United State's agriculture. The NAIS plan requires two types of mandatory registration for everyone who owns even just one animal. First, owners must register their name, home address, telephone number and Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates of their 'premise' in a vast corporate digital library. Secondly, in order for any animal to leave its 'premise', the owner will be required to obtain an ID number for it which will be kept in a vast corporate digital library and have the animal microchipped.

The NAIS requirements have yet been forthright as to whether DNA samples will be required in the future.

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2006/01/nais-marking-beasts.html

Monday, January 09, 2006 NAIS Marking the Beasts Hmm... What do we have hear? Fox tracks all in a line? A one legged goat? A hermit crab scuttling? What could it be? After you've thought about it for a bit leave comments with your ideas... Tune in next time for answers! :) On a totally different topic, do you know about the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) that the government is working on implementing? NAIS is a system that the USDA is proposing to identify all livestock in the United States and also identify all premises (locations with any livestock). This includes all birds, sheep, cows, pigs, horses, llamas and many other animals. The stated goal is to be able to have 48 hour trace back of all meats from the consumer to the farm where the animal originated incase of illness or contamination. That sounds all well and good except that: 1) They are including livestock sold directly from small farms to the end consumer where there is already 100% track back in much less than 48 hours. If you buy locally from the source you know exactly where your food came from. 2) They are snaring homesteaders by including even livestock you might keep for your own consumption. The government is implementing huge "non-compliance" fines if you don't report your backyard flock of chickens, your summer feeder pig, your lawn mowing sheep, etc. This will take away your right to raise your own source of eggs, meat and wool. 3) They are including animals that are not in the food supply such as pets like horses, llamas, etc that are not intended for consumption. Under the plan every single animal must be identified. Any births, deaths and movements on or off the farm will be required to be logged and reported to the government. If you take your sheep to a show you will have to track their location and submit paperwork to the government. If you go for a trail ride with your horse you will have to report that to the government. If your pig has piglets you'll have to report that and then if some of those piglets die or you eat one you'll have to report that. Pretty soon after that the government is going to want to charge a consumption tax every time you eat one of your own animals. After all, unless you buy all your food then you're not paying sales tax, you're not helping the Gross Domestic Product grow, you're not paying your share. You think I'm joking? You are required by law to pay taxes on any barters you do. It is only a tiny step from that law and NAIS to a tax on every chicken, every egg, every pig, every sheep, etc. Then they'll go for your tomatoes and carrots. (No, I am definitely not paranoid enough.) All this identification, tattooing, labeling, tagging, micro-chipping, RFID equipment and paper work is going to cost money. Who do you think is going to pay? You! That's who. NAIS will increase the cost of food both to those who raise it and for consumers at the farmer's market and at the supermarket. This is going to require more government bureaucracy to manage which will eventually lead to more fees and taxes collected by the government to manage a system tracking your life and making it ever more expensive. Under the plan the government requires you to track the animal movements as well as your premise location (your home) with GPS and address coordinates. All animal locations and movements must be logged and reported under penalty of confiscation and fines. Furthermore the USDA will not guarantee to keep the information confidential because of the Freedom of Information Act. This means that radical animal rights groups (like E-ll-F and Pee.Ee.Tee.Ah a.k.a. Pet-ah) will be able to find out exactly where you live and precisely what you have for animals. These terrorist groups have already attacked farms and destroyed property killing people and animals. Now they'll have even more data to use figuring out who to target. Lovely. Will this give us any better security? No. Almost all of the cases of food born illness and recalls are caused by contamination at the slaughter house, packing plant and further along the chain of supply. Perhaps this sort of thing is a good idea on the large scale producers, the factory farms, the big slaughter houses. It is not needed in our back yards and homesteads. It is not necessary for small farms selling direct to the consumer or other end users. It is certainly beyond reason for non-food pets. Virtually all of the remaining cases of food born illness like Mad Cow and the like are the product of bad practices like feeding animals back to their own species and over crowding. These are problems that are not related to the small farms, the homesteaders and the backyard flocks. NAIS won't solve these problems. Furthermore, Mad Cow, to take the government's favorite scarecrow, is something that takes years to decades to infect. A 48 hour trace back is going to do diddley-squat. At the very least NAIS should allow exemptions for pets, homesteaders, backyard flocks and small farms that sell direct to the end user. These groups already have better than 48 hour track back and are not the threat. The threat is big agri-businesses, "factory farms" that lock millions of animals in cages and generate ideal conditions for disease to run wild through animals with suppressed immune systems and antibiotics in their feed. These are the corporations that grind up cows and feed them back to the cows. They are the ones that routinely feed antibiotics to their livestock producing new strains of drug resistant super-germs. They are the ones generating enormous mountains of waste and pollution the taints the air and the water. They are the problem. If they are so gung-ho for NAIS then let them implement it for themselves. NAIS will lead to more centralization of our food supply and bigger government. The big corporations that already control too much of our food supply will control even more of it. More control over the system of production by fewer corporations and individuals is a threat to our nation. This is the last thing we need. What we need is decentralized local production to ensure the safety of our food supply. If all our food comes from a few sources then it is in great danger for everyone. If our food comes from many small localized farms then we have greater national food security. NAIS is exactly the wrong answer. It is not too late to fight this nonsense. There are several groups* working to fight it. Join with them (Oklahomans Against NAIS, FreeTennesee, StopAnimalID, Americans Against NAIS). Sign the petition against NAIS. Write the USDA. Write your local newspapers. Write your state representatives. Write your congressional critters in the House and Senate. Let them know how you feel about this. If you don't speak up now you may lose one more right to privacy as big government gets bigger and reaches its hand deeper into your life and your pocket book. NAIS is a big government, big corporation answer to a question they don't even understand.

It's obvious that Monsanto is well connected in Washington. How does this insider power get used?

Full link to so much more:
http://www.verdant.net/corp.htm

Read about every progressive's favorite chemical company: Monsanto's 1998 Annual Report
(See page 10 thru 13)
Be sure to read "PART III, ITEM 10. DIRECTORS AND EXECUTIVE OFFICERS OF THE REGISTRANT." Here are some of the preceeding jobs of the Monsanto directors:

Steven L. Engelberg, 54, Senior Vice President, Partner, Keck, Mahin & Cate, 1986; Partner-in-Charge,-Monsanto Company eck, Mahin & Cate Washington, D.C. office, 1986; Chief of Staff of Office of the United States Trade Representative (on leave from Keck, Mahin & Cate until May 1993), 1993; Vice President, Worldwide Government Affairs--Monsanto Company, 1994; and present position, 1996.

R. William Ide III, 56, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary--Monsanto Company; Partner, Kutak Rock, 1989; President, American Bar Association, 1993-1994; Partner, Long, Aldridge & Norman, 1993; and present position, 1996.

Note that William D.Ruckelshaus is a Director of Monsanto.

Mr. Ruckelshaus is Chairman of Browning-Ferris Industries, Inc. He was twice the EPA Administrator and served as Deputy Attorney General of the United States. In addition, he held the positions of Majority Leader of the Indiana House of Representatives, Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Senior Vice President of Weyerhaeuser Company. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. He is also Chairman of the Board, Browning-Ferris Industries.

From the following: http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=852

1.Monsanto and WTO
Just the man...
When the US takes its trade case on GMOs to the WTO, one person who will have a role is the Director General's deputy, Rufus Yerxa, a former US ambassador to Gatt, the WTO's predecessor, and international counsel to Monsanto. At the time of his appointment the Financial Times described him as "just the man [the WTO Director General] will need should the US ever bleat to the WTO about EU restrictions on genetically modified food."
http://ngin.tripod.com/210802c.htm

Rufus Yerxa Biography
Rufus Yerxa is Monsanto's Chief Counsel and Head of Government Public
Affairs for Europe. Previously he served as US Ambassador to the GATT in Geneva and as Chief Deputy USTR during the 1st Clinton Administration, when he played a key role in the Uruguay Round Negotiations. He was also a Partner in the Brussels Office of Akin Gump, Strauss Hauer & Feld,
specialising in EC and International Trade Matters.
http://www.jus.uio.no/lm/cm.conferences/ih.and.tr_2001.html#to232

Rufus Yerxa, the most senior legal official at the WTO, to whom the legal affairs division reports according to the Secretariat Org Chart, worked as European then International Counsel for Monsanto immediately before being appointed to his WTO post, or so indicates his curriculum vitae on the WTO website.

A significant number of Monsanto products are listed in the annex to the US letter requesting consultations with the EC.

Mr. Yerxa is the ultimate boss of the legal affairs division at the WTO, which in a number of ways may influence the proceedings if a panel goes ahead on GMOs--including involvement in the selection of panelists, legal
advice to the panelists, advice in the identification and selection of outside scientific "experts" in the case.

According to Rules of Conduct for the understanding on rules and procedures governing the settlement of disputes, including Secretariat officials assisting in respect of DS proceedings are covered by the following Governing Principle:

"1. Each person covered by these Rules (as defined in paragraph 1 of Section IV below and hereinafter called "covered person") shall be independent and impartial, shall avoid direct or indirect conflicts of interest and shall
respect the confidentiality of proceedings of bodies pursuant to the dispute settlement mechanism, so that through the observance of such standards of
conduct the integrity and impartiality of that mechanism are preserved.

These Rules shall in no way modify the rights and obligations of Members under the DSU nor the rules and procedures therein."

How do we get our officials to consider how this Governing Principle might apply to Mr. Yerxa in respect of the GM0s case? Major issue is whether Mr. Yerxa is a covered person--the exact wording of the Rules of Conduct could
lead to a negative inference--he isn't a secretariat member singled out to assist in the particular dispute. On the other hand, as the "top boss" he has unparalleled potential scope to control and direct the work of such
secretariat members.

If the Governing Principle does cover him, does the requirement to "avoid direct or indirect conflicts of interest" require that a kind of Chinese wall be created whereby Mr. Yerxa doesn't engage in communications with
members of the legal affairs division staff in relation to the case, or is a more stringent approach needed?

There is also an issue of disclosure: the disclosure requirements in the rules of conduct are to say the least not very detailed. Would they extend, assuming Mr. Yerxa is a "covered person", to stating whether he currently
holds any Monsanto shares or share options?

Even if Mr. Yerxa is not a "covered person", there is of course the policy question of whether the integrity of a dispute requires nevertheless that the appearance of a potential conflict of interest be addressed.

This whole export trade stuff stinks. Our own farms are going to end up on welfare and this is all a horse and pony show for the big companies.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1579642/posts
Who benefits from GM crops?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.