***AFF***

---1AC---

ADT 1AC

Plan
Plan: the United States Federal Government should
substantially curtail domestic surveillance of agriculture by
amending the Animal Disease Traceability Program.

Small Farms
Advantage one is small farms
ADT devastates small farmers and is built on a flawed export
model
McGeary, et al 12 (Judiath- Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, Email to the
office of management and budget detailing the objections to ADT- over 60 different
organizations signed on in support, Sep. 14, Re: USDA-APHIS Animal Disease
Traceability Final Rule RIN: 0579-AD24, http://www.r-calfusa.com/wpcontent/uploads/animal_id/120913-ltr-to-OMB-on-costs.pdf)
ADT has been criticized by thousands of individuals and organizations because of
the undue burdens that it will impose on producers. The cost of tagging and the
extensive recordkeeping requirements under the rule will impact farmers and
ranchers, as well as related businesses such as sale barns and veterinarians, and
will ripple through our rural economies. As detailed in our letter of July 24, the USDA has
significantly underestimated the costs of its rule to both cattle producers and poultry producers. While the agency
claims that the costs are under $100 million annually, independent studies indicate that the costs could be three to

the USDA failed to even attempt to

estimate the costs to small-scale poultry farmers, a failure that , by itself, is
sufficient cause to reject the rule. Ultimately, the cost will be more than dollars and
cents. If producers cannot afford to meet the new requirements, they will be unable to purchase new animals or
market their animals out of state, which could lead to more of them going out of business. Farmers and
ranchers nationwide are already struggling just to keep their cattle alive through the drought. Over
five times that high for cattle producers alone. Moreover,

75 percent of the contiguous U.S. is experiencing drought conditions, and almost half the country is in severe or

The impact on livestock and poultry

producers has been devastating. The forage and feed situation is the worst this country has seen since
worse drought, including the major farming and ranching regions.

the 1930s Depression,1 as producers with parched pastures, rangelands, and crops face expensive hay, grain, and
shipping costs. Increased feed costs have led to a reduction in profits per livestock animal by more than $100 just
since June 1.2 One agricultural economist has estimated that 2013 feed prices could triple the 1990-2004 average.3
Rapidly depleting livestock water is forcing many producers to haul water, which is also expensive and time-

Families who have been the agricultural backbone of this nation are now at
the breaking point. Many have already sold a large part of their herds, and the
slaughter of many breeding age cows will mean that it will take a decade of normal
rainfall to rebuild the cattle population in America. Traceability programs, such as USDAs ADT
consuming.

rule, also impose costs on livestock-related businesses, such as sale barns and veterinarians. It was recently
reported that sale barns in New Zealand have added a new surcharge for cattle sales due to the additional
equipment, staffing and administrative costs required for their NAIT (national animal identification and tracing)
program.4 It is likely that similar costs under ADT will be passed on to U.S. farmers and ranchers. Like the sale

those producers who are able to stay in business will have to find a way to pass
on the costs, which will mean higher prices for consumers , who are already facing
higher prices at the grocery store.5 In contrast to the clear costs of the program, the benefits remain
vague. The USDAs Regulatory Impact Analysis focused almost entirely on the monetary
benefits from exports, but this approach is fundamentally flawed for several
reasons. First, the benefits are based on models of varying degrees of traceability ,6
yet tagging is not synonymous with traceability : an animal with an ear tag attached
prior to crossing state lines may become untraceable later through lost tags or poor
recordkeeping by state agencies. Second , as has been shown repeatedly and acknowledged by
USDA officials, market access often depends more on politics than on traceability or
other measures. Finally, the financial benefits of exports accrue almost entirely to
barns,

the companies who sell the exports. Since the costs of the program will rest almost
entirely on livestock producers and related businesses, it is inappropriate to justify
those costs on the basis of benefits to other entities .

ADT exacerbates the burdens of small farmers with no analysis

or compensation
McGeary, et al 12 (Judiath- Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, Email to the
office of management and budget detailing the objections to ADT- over 10 different
organizations signed on in support, June 6, Re: USDA-APHIS Animal Disease
Traceability Final Rule RIN: 0579-AD24, http://www.r-calfusa.com/wpcontent/uploads/animal_id/120606-OMB-Letter-updated.pdf
Tagging cattle is an equipment and labor-intensive task . The reason many small
producers dont tag at this time is because they have not spent thousands of dollars
on equipment such as chutes. Moreover, the claim that it would cost 18 cents for the labor to tag
was based on the assumption that it takes only one minute to tag one animal.12 That may be true in very
large, industrial-scale operations when averaged out over thousands of animals, but
it is often far from true on a smaller scale. Cattle do not always run quickly and quietly through
chutes, then stand still to have their ears tagged. The agencys estimate also does not take into consideration the
administrative oversight needed to assure accuracy of the procedure. Even for those producers who are large
enough to afford the necessary equipment,

the USDAs cost estimates ignored several

significant factors.

USDA estimated the total upper-end cost of complying with animal identification
provisions in the proposed rule at only $4.68 per head.13 Yet USDA had been presented a study, explained below,
that estimated that the real cost of tagging cattle ranged from $17.00 per head to $27.00 per head, excluding the
cost of the tag itself.14 Kris Ringwall, Ph.D., Director, Dickinson Research Center Extension and Livestock Specialist,
North Dakota State University (NDSU), conducted the study that involved the tagging of 14,432 calves
during the three-year period 2004-2006. The study concluded that the cost working each calf, tag placement, and
documentation was $7.00 per calf. In addition, Dr. Ringwalls threeyear project determined that the tagging of
calves was costly to producers because of shrink, which he defined as weight loss while handling calves.15 Dr.
Rinwall stated in his testimony: When weve measured shrink in the cattle we have worked during the project, we
estimate up to $10 to $20 in lost income potential per calf, regardless of the management activity applied.16 Based
on Dr. Ringwalls findings, the cost of tagging and documenting calves, and the cost of the income lost due to
shrink, ranged from $17.00 per head to $27.00 per head in 2006 or 2007 dollars, excluding the cost of the tag. The
cost in 2012 dollars would obviously be greater. Applying Dr. Ringwalls findings to the likely number of cattle that
cross state lines each year, the cost of the proposed rule to U.S. cattle producers ranges from $850 million to $1.35
billion, using our estimate of 50 million head of cattle crossing state lines each year. Even if only the cattle moved
to slaughter in 2010 were considered (32.25 million head), the cost to U.S. cattle producers would range from $582
million to $924 million.17 SUMMARY: By understating labor and capital costs, as well as the impact on the animals

the USDA significantly underestimated

the economic burden on cattle owners due to the ADT rule . II. USDA improperly
dismissed the costs to cattle-related businesses The ADTs costly requirements do not stop with
weight (and therefore value) associated with this regulation,

the people who own cattle. Both sale barns and veterinarians will be subject to long-term record-keeping
requirements under the proposed rule.18 The agency dismissed the cost to sale barns by stating
that they are already required to keep records on the cattle sold.19 The agency ignored, however, that the current
record-keeping requirements do not require separate documents for each animal or even group of animals, while
the proposed rule would do so, vastly expanding the sheer quantity of paper or data that must be maintained by

Even more disingenuously, the agency anticipated that veterinarians will

charge producers for the costs of keeping such records and then failed to address
what those costs are likely to be.20 Whether the sale barns and vets pass on the costs to the producers
the sale barns.

or absorb it themselves, someone must pay those costs. In addition, the agencys assumption about the costs for
veterinary services failed to include the typical charges for having a vet come out to the farm (or, in the alternative,

The USDA failed to

address the costs imposed by the ADT rule on a broad segment of support services
provided to livestock producers or to account for how these costs might be
absorbed or passed on to farmers and ranchers , in addition to the direct costs
imposed on cattle owners. III. USDA wholly failed to address the costs to poultry
for hauling animals to the vet), which can range from $30 to over $100 for each visit.

owners

Under the proposed rule, poultry moving interstate must be official identified either through group

There are no exceptions to the ID

requirement, and they apply to both the person who sends and the person who
received the animals.22 Group identification is defined so that it only applies when a unit of animals is
identification or with a permanent sealed and numbered leg band.21

managed together as one group throughout the preharvest chain.23 This definition describes the management
practices at large, vertically-integrated facilities, but does not apply to the majority of small-scale poultry owners

With respect to poultry,

the agency conducted no analysis of the costs in its Regulatory Impact Analysis . The
agency acknowledged in a sentence or two that there will be an impact on live bird markets, but also
admitted that it does not know what those costs will be .24 The agency did not even
acknowledge that there will be costs imposed on individuals and farmers who
operate on a small scale, such as those who order day-old chicks from out-of-state or those who take birds
who frequently commingle poultry of different ages and from different sources.

to slaughterhouses across state lines. Instead, the agency made the false assumption that incremental costs for

the vast majority of people who own

poultry are not part of a vertically integrated operation and will have to use
individual identification for their poultry, creating very significant costs in both time
and out-of-pocket expenses. To understand the impact the rule would have on poultry owners, its
most poultry enterprises are expected to be minimal.25 Yet

important to first understand the complexity of the poultry industry. From commercial pastured broilers and
pastured laying hens to backyard flocks to pets, hundreds of thousands of people own millions of birds under
diverse conditions. For example, in USDAs 2007 survey of agriculture, the agency identified over 140,000 farms
with between 1 and 399 layer hens.26 The survey did not include the many people in both rural and urban settings
who own a few birds for food, show, or as pets, although urban and backyard poultry production is growing at an
exponential rate. There are myriad variations in how people buy poultry outside of vertically-integrated operations.
Many people order day-old chicks from hatcheries, commonly out-of-state. Some buy chicks from local feed and
supply stores, who in turn usually have ordered the day-old chicks from hatcheries. Some buy juvenile or grown
birds directly from farms. And many homeowners or smaller operations purchase "spent" laying hens for their
personal use from commercial-scale operations, after they have become uneconomic to commercial egg producers.
There are also many variations in how people manage their poultry. Pastured broiler operations often raise birds in
discrete all-in-all-out units that might be amenable to group identification. In contrast, pastured layer operations will
often commingle multiple batches of birds from different locations over a period of many years, culling individuals
in the flock only as needed. Many people have to cross state lines to process their birds because so few
slaughterhouses accept poultry from independent producers. The backyard owners and live bird markets have, if
anything, even more complicated systems.

The costs of raising poultry on a small-scale,

from one bird to a few hundred, are very high, and there are no
economies of scale . From buying feed in small quantities to the natural supplements to maintain health
and necessary to certified organic production (such as diatomaceous earth, kelp, oyster and clam shell, and anti-

small-scale poultry owners face costs that equal or even exceed their
ability to recover those costs through sales. While pastured poultry products may sell at a
parasitic herbs),

seemingly high price, the profit margin is extremely slim, perhaps $1 on an entire bird or 25 cents on a dozen eggs.
Very few of these individuals have employees to care for the birds, and almost none have employees to handle
administrative functions. Thus the paperwork involved in tracking groups, even dynamic groups as is done in the
vertically integrated hog operations, would impose significant costs in time and effort. The farmers would have to
develop database or paperwork systems capable of tracking the merging and divided groups, and then enter and
maintain all of the information.

Its far from clear how the tagging could even be

accomplished. Permanently tagging baby chicks or young chickens is simply impossible because of the growth
of their legs. That growth would require holders of poultry to change leg bands a number of times as they grew, and
documenting each change in identification. Even for adults, the cost of the tags and CVIs could easily be more than
the value of the entire animal. At a meeting of the USDA Secretarys Advisory Committee on Animal Health, a USDA
official stated that the agency had conducted several studies on the issue of tagging poultry in the context of the

Dr. Hegngis testimony indicates that there simply is no

costeffective, reliable way to individually tag poultry on this scale.27 Yet the USDA ignored
live bird market system.

the work conducted by its own staff in proposing the new requirements for poultry under the ADT rule. SUMMARY:

The USDA completely failed to examine the economic impacts to the poultry
industry, especially on smaller scale operations . If the rule is implemented as
proposed, it will place disproportionate, onerous burdens on both small-

scale farmers and those who seek to raise poultry for their personal use and
enjoyment.

ADT is a zombie NAIS

Lewis 12 (Patrice- Backwoods Home Magazine contributor, Issue 137 Sep/Oct

2012, Animal disease traceability,

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/lewis137.html)
In 2009, small farmers and ranchers breathed a sigh of relief. So did people worried about
another curtailment of individual liberty and those whose religious principles oppose microchipping. They
thought they had driven a stake through the heart of the National Animal Identification System
(NAIS), a USDA-run, state-implemented, program whose goal was to microchip and track all livestock, right down
to the smallest chick on the smallest farm. But three years later NAIS has risen from the grave .
Now the monster goes by a different name Animal Disease Traceability (ADT) and claims to
be (cough) kinder and gentler. Don't be fooled. ADT is at least as insidious as NAIS . When I was asked
to write this article, Backwoods Home's editors requested I keep the ranting to a minimum and provide just the
facts. Those instructions were merited because frankly it's hard for a livestock owner to discuss the issue without
frothing at the mouth. I have yet to hear from any small farmer, rancher, or homesteader who approved of NAIS or
thought it was a good idea or even a feasible one. And we shouldn't be much fonder of ADT. I'm going to focus on

ADT owes so much

to the supposedly "dead" NAIS . [image omitted] The background The NAIS was conceived by
the National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA), a group that consists primarily of digital chip
manufacturers and big corporate meat producers . Piggybacking on the fear caused by the twin
the current threat, ADT; but a little background is in order, since the USDA's proposal for

threats of terrorism and mad cow disease (BSE), the NIAA thought up a brilliant plan: "Hey Charlie, let's microchip
every single livestock animal in America!" Under

animal

NAIS, every owner of even one livestock

(cattle, horses, sheep, goats, poultry, pigs, bison, deer, elk, and even some species of fish raised for

would have been required to register their name, address, telephone number, and the
Global Positioning System coordinates of the animal's location with the federal
government. Every individual animal in a small operation would have an implanted
Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) bearing a 15-digit number. Large producers
aquaculture)

of pigs or poultry, on the other hand, were going to be allowed the advantage of grouping animals under one

The livestock owner would be required to report activities associated with the
chipped animals. Not only major events like birth or death; if your ram jumped your fence, you would have
had to report it to the government. Ride your horse off your property? Each ride would have to be reported. No
exceptions. There was more: heavy fines for non-compliance (up to $1,000 per day
under proposed Texas regulations) and veterinarians would be required to report
incidences of non-compliance if they find animals without ID numbers . The stated goal of
number.

NAIS was to safeguard America's meat supply against diseases by tracking every conceivable livestock animal. This
detailed control on potential disease vectors would, in turn, soothe the fears of export markets In reality, of course,

the implementation was a nightmare, both logistically and in terms of property rights
and privacy. Additionally, it was clear from the start that the major beneficiaries were
the large producers, and that small farmers and ranchers would be unfairly
impacted. Thankfully, in June 2009, federal funding for NAIS in its original form was dropped from the fiscal 2010
spending bill by the House Agricultural Appropriations Subcommittee. House leaders indicated no future funds
would be available unless the USDA one day made NAIS mandatory. Instead, the USDA abandoned NAIS. Some
funding was kept to maintain the program in places where it was already being implemented, such as in Wisconsin,

Some (myself included) navely assumed

that the USDA had backed down from such an intrusive program because of the
but the rest of the program was effectively dismantled.

opposition.

We were unaware that something new and just as insidious was up the USDA's sleeve.

NAIS hurts small farmersincreases disease and bioterror risk

Zanoni No date (Mary Zanoni-Ph.D. (Cornell), J.D. (Yale), Executive Director of
Farm for Life. Why You Should Oppose the USDAs Mandatory Property and Animal

Surveillance Program, https://www.google.com/url?

sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&u
rl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.poultrypress.com%2Fhobby%2FWhy%2520You
%2520Should
%2520Oppose.doc&ei=LIFfVYjdEsS_sAWt54DwDg&usg=AFQjCNG0rZMUrC5qfIf_nxZQRJuaJcy_w&sig2=y5t1FBJRBcNi-YqxvMD08g&bvm=bv.93990622,d.b2w )
Poultry fanciers and keepers of small flocks are facing a grave threat from a
proposed government intrusion into their innocent choice of pastimes and way of
life. For several years, the USDA has been working with the largest-scale animal industry
organizations (for example, the National Pork Producers, Monsanto Company, and Cargill Meat) to
develop a mandatory National Animal Identification System (NAIS). However, most small scale
livestock producers, people who raise animals for their own food, and people who keep horses or livestock
as companion animals do not know about the USDAs plans . The NAIS will drive small
producers out of the market, will make people abandon raising animals for their own
food, will invade Americans personal privacy to a degree never before tolerated ,
will violate the religious freedom of Americans whose beliefs make it impossible for them to comply,
and will erase the last vestiges of animal welfare from the production of animal
foods. The Problem On April 25, 2005, the USDA released Draft Program Standards (St.) and a Draft
Strategic Plan (Plan) concerning the NAIS. If you think the description below sounds too bizarre to be true, please
go to usda.gov/nais, read the Standards and Plan, and check the citations. By January 1, 2008, the NAIS will be
mandatory. (Plan, pp. 2, 10, 17.) Every person who owns even one horse, cow, pig, chicken, sheep, pigeon, or
virtually any livestock animal, will be forced to register their home, including owners name, address, and telephone
number, and keyed to Global Positioning System coordinates for satellite monitoring, in a giant federal database
under a 7-digit premises ID number. (St., pp. 3-4, 10-12; Plan, p. 5.) Every animal will have to be assigned a 15digit ID number, also to be kept in a giant federal database. The form of ID will most likely be a tag or microchip
containing a Radio Frequency Identification Device, designed to be read from a distance. (Plan, p. 10; St., pp. 6, 12,
20, 27-28.) The plan may also include collecting the DNA of every animal and/or a retinal scan of every animal.
(Plan, p.13.) The owner will be required to report: the birthdate of an animal, the application of every animals ID
tag, every time an animal leaves or enters the property, every time an animal loses a tag, every time a tag is
replaced, the slaughter or death of an animal, or if any animal is missing. Such events must be reported within 24
hours. (St., pp. 12-13, 17-21.) Third parties, such as veterinarians, will be required to report sightings of animals.
(St., p. 25.) In other words, if you call a vet to your property to treat your horse, cow, or any other animal, and the
vet finds any animal without the mandatory 15-digit computer-readable ID, the vet may be required to report you. If
you do not comply, the USDA will exercise enforcement against you. (St., p. 7; Plan, p. 17.) The USDA has not yet
specified the nature of enforcement, but presumably it will include imposing fines and/or seizing your animals.

There are no exceptions -- under the USDA plan , you will be forced to register and report even if
you raise animals only for your own food or keep horses for draft or for transportation. The Negative Effects

Eradication of Small Farms People with just a few meat animals or 40-cow dairies
are already living on the edge financially. The USDA plan will force many of them to
give up farming. Loss of the True Security of Organic and Local Foods The NAIS is
touted by the USDA and agricorporations as a way to make our food supply
secure against diseases or terrorism. However, most people instinctively understand that real
food security comes from raising food yourself or buying from a local farmer you actually know.
The USDA plan will only kill off more local sources of production and further promote
the giant industrial methods which cause many food safety and disease problems .
Extreme Damage to Personal Privacy Legally, livestock animals are a form of
personal property. It is unprecedented for the United States government to conduct
large-scale computer-aided surveillance of its citizens simply because they own a
common type of property. (The only exceptions are registration of motor vehicles and guns, due to their
clear inherent dangers but they are registered at the state level, not by the federal government.) The NAIS
would actually subject the owner of a chicken to far more surveillance than the
owner of a gun. Surveillance of small-scale livestock owners is like the government subjecting people to
surveillance for owning a couch, a TV, a lawnmower. What about non-livestock animals? Will the government next
want to register all cats, dogs, and parakeets, and demand the global positioning coordinates of their owners
houses and apartments?

Insult to Animal Welfare The NAIS is the ultimate objectification

of higher, sensitive living creatures, treating individual animals as if they were cans
of peas with a bar code. Many people who raise their own animals or buy from small, local producers do so
because they are very troubled by industrial-scale production of chickens, cattle, and pigs. These people will
be forced either to sacrifice their personal privacy to government surveillance, or to
stop raising their own food by humane standards . Burden on Religious Freedom Many
adherents of plain (and other) faiths raise their own food animals and use animals in
farming and transportation because their beliefs require them to live this way. Such
people obviously cannot comply with the USDAs computerized, technologydependent system. The NAIS will force these people to violate their religious beliefs.

Disease spread causes extinction

David Quammen 12, award-winning science writer, long-time columnist for

Outside magazine for fifteen years, with work in National Geographic, Harper's,
Rolling Stone, the New York Times Book Review and other periodicals, 9/29, Could
the next big animal-to-human disease wipe us out?, The Guardian, pg. 29, Lexis
Infectious disease is all around us
under ordinary
conditions it's
natural
But conditions aren't always ordinary

. It's one of the basic processes that ecologists study, along with predation and competition. Predators are big beasts that eat their prey

from outside. Pathogens (disease-causing agents, such as viruses) are small beasts that eat their prey from within. Although infectious disease can seem grisly and dreadful,
,

every bit as

as what lions do to wildebeests and zebras.

. Just as

predators have their accustomed prey, so do pathogens. And just as a lion might occasionally depart from its normal behaviour - to kill a cow instead of a wildebeest, or a human instead of a zebra - so a pathogen can shift to a new

Aberrations occur
zoonosis
It's a word
target.

. When a pathogen leaps from an animal into a person, and succeeds in establishing itself as an infectious presence, sometimes causing illness or death, the result is a

. It's a mildly technical term, zoonosis, unfamiliar to most people, but it helps clarify the biological complexities behind the ominous headlines about swine flu, bird flu, Sars, emerging diseases in general, and

the threat of a global pandemic.

of the future,

destined for heavy use in the 21st century

. Ebola and Marburg are zoonoses. So is

bubonic plague. So was the so-called Spanish influenza of 1918-1919, which had its source in a wild aquatic bird and emerged to kill as many as 50 million people. All of the human influenzas are zoonoses. As are monkeypox, bovine
tuberculosis, Lyme disease, West Nile fever, rabies and a strange new affliction called Nipah encephalitis, which has killed pigs and pig farmers in Malaysia. Each of these zoonoses reflects the action of
that

can "spillover crossing into people from other animals

",

a pathogen

. Aids is a disease of zoonotic origin caused by a virus that, having reached

humans through a few accidental events in western and central Africa, now passes human-to-human. This form of interspecies leap is not rare; about 60% of all human infectious diseases currently known either cross routinely or
have recently crossed between other animals and us. Some of those - notably rabies - are familiar, widespread and still horrendously lethal, killing humans by the thousands despite centuries of efforts at coping with their effects.
Others are new and inexplicably sporadic, claiming a few victims or a few hundred, and then disappearing for years.

to lurk within

what's called

a reservoir host

Zoonotic pathogens can hide

. The least conspicuous strategy is

: a living organism that carries the pathogen while suffering little or no illness. When a disease seems to disappear between outbreaks, it's

often still lingering nearby, within some reservoir host. A rodent? A bird? A butterfly? A bat? To reside undetected is probably easiest wherever biological diversity is high and the ecosystem is relatively undisturbed. The converse is
also true: ecological disturbance causes diseases to emerge. Shake a tree and things fall out. Michelle Barnes is an energetic, late 40s-ish woman, an avid rock climber and cyclist. Her auburn hair, she told me cheerily, came from a
bottle. It approximates the original colour, but the original is gone. In 2008, her hair started falling out; the rest went grey "pretty much overnight". This was among the lesser effects of a mystery illness that had nearly killed her
during January that year, just after she'd returned from Uganda. Her story paralleled the one Jaap Taal had told me about Astrid, with several key differences - the main one being that Michelle Barnes was still alive. Michelle and her
husband, Rick Taylor, had wanted to see mountain gorillas, too. Their guide had taken them through Maramagambo Forest and into Python Cave. They, too, had to clamber across those slippery boulders. As a rock climber, Barnes
said, she tends to be very conscious of where she places her hands. No, she didn't touch any guano. No, she was not bumped by a bat. By late afternoon they were back, watching the sunset. It was Christmas evening 2007. They
arrived home on New Year's Day. On 4 January, Barnes woke up feeling as if someone had driven a needle into her skull. She was achy all over, feverish. "And then, as the day went on, I started developing a rash across my stomach."
The rash spread. "Over the next 48 hours, I just went down really fast." By the time Barnes turned up at a hospital in suburban Denver, she was dehydrated; her white blood count was imperceptible; her kidneys and liver had begun
shutting down. An infectious disease specialist, Dr Norman K Fujita, arranged for her to be tested for a range of infections that might be contracted in Africa. All came back negative, including the test for Marburg. Gradually her body
regained strength and her organs began to recover. After 12 days, she left hospital, still weak and anaemic, still undiagnosed. In March she saw Fujita on a follow-up visit and he had her serum tested again for Marburg. Again,
negative. Three more months passed, and Barnes, now grey-haired, lacking her old energy, suffering abdominal pain, unable to focus, got an email from a journalist she and Taylor had met on the Uganda trip, who had just seen a
news article. In the Netherlands, a woman had died of Marburg after a Ugandan holiday during which she had visited a cave full of bats. Barnes spent the next 24 hours Googling every article on the case she could find. Early the
following Monday morning, she was back at Dr Fujita's door. He agreed to test her a third time for Marburg. This time a lab technician crosschecked the third sample, and then the first sample. The new results went to Fujita, who
called Barnes: "You're now an honorary infectious disease doctor. You've self-diagnosed, and the Marburg test came back positive." The Marburg virus had reappeared in Uganda in 2007. It was a small outbreak, affecting four miners,
one of whom died, working at a site called Kitaka Cave. But Joosten's death, and Barnes's diagnosis, implied a change in the potential scope of the situation. That local Ugandans were dying of Marburg was a severe concern sufficient to bring a response team of scientists in haste. But if tourists, too, were involved, tripping in and out of some python-infested Marburg repository, unprotected, and then boarding their return flights to other continents, the
place was not just a peril for Ugandan miners and their families. It was also an international threat. The first team of scientists had collected about 800 bats from Kitaka Cave for dissecting and sampling, and marked and released
more than 1,000, using beaded collars coded with a number. That team, including scientist Brian Amman, had found live Marburg virus in five bats. Entering Python Cave after Joosten's death, another team of scientists, again
including Amman, came across one of the beaded collars they had placed on captured bats three months earlier and 30 miles away. "It confirmed my suspicions that these bats are moving," Amman said - and moving not only
through the forest but from one roosting site to another. Travel of individual bats between far-flung roosts implied circumstances whereby Marburg virus might ultimately be transmitted all across Africa, from one bat encampment to
another. It voided the comforting assumption that this virus is strictly localised. And it highlighted the complementary question: why don't outbreaks of Marburg virus disease happen more often? Marburg is only one instance to
which that question applies. Why not more Ebola? Why not more Sars? In the case of

Sars

, the scenario

could have been very much worse

. Apart from the 2003

outbreak and the aftershock cases in early 2004, it hasn't recurred. . . so far. Eight thousand cases are relatively few for such an explosive infection; 774 people died, not 7 million. Several factors contributed to limiting the scope and
impact of the outbreak, of which humanity's good luck was only one. Another was the speed and excellence of the laboratory diagnostics - finding the virus and identifying it. Still another was the brisk efficiency with which cases

If the virus had arrived in a

it might have burned through a much

were isolated, contacts were traced and quarantine measures were instituted, first in southern China, then in Hong Kong, Singapore, Hanoi and Toronto.

different
city
larger segment of humanity
sort of big

- more loosely governed, full of poor people, lacking first-rate medical institutions -

. One further factor, possibly the most crucial, was inherent in the way Sars affects the human body: symptoms tend to appear in a person before, rather

than after, that person becomes highly infectious. That allowed many Sars cases to be recognised, hospitalised and placed in isolation before they hit their peak of infectivity. With influenza and many other diseases, the order is

1918 influenza
occurred
before
globalisation
When the Next Big One comes it will
conform to the
1918 influenza high infectivity preceding notable
symptoms
it move through
airports like an angel of death
reversed. That probably helped account for the scale of worldwide misery and death during the

-1919

. And that infamous global pandemic

in the era

. Everything nowadays moves around the planet faster, including viruses.

same perverse pattern as the

. That will help

likely

cities and

. The Next Big One is a subject that disease

scientists around the world often address. The most recent big one is Aids, of which the eventual total bigness cannot even be predicted - about 30 million deaths, 34 million living people infected, and with no end in sight.

not every virus goes airborne

If HIV could you and I might already be
dead If rabies could would be the most horrific pathogen on the planet The
influenzas are well adapted for airborne transmission
Fortunately,

from one host to another.

the

virus

-1

, it

, which is why a new strain can circle the world within days. The Sars virus travels this

route, too, or anyway by the respiratory droplets of sneezes and coughs - hanging in the air of a hotel corridor, moving through the cabin of an aeroplane - and that capacity, combined with its case fatality rate of almost 10%, is what

Human-to-human transmission is the crux That

is what
localised
disease
from a global pandemic

made it so scary in 2003 to the people who understood it best.

separates a

bizarre, awful,

, intermittent and mysterious

(such as Ebola)

capacity

. Have you

noticed the persistent, low-level buzz about avian influenza, the strain known as H5N1, among disease experts over the past 15 years? That's because avian flu worries them deeply, though it hasn't caused many human fatalities.
Swine flu comes and goes periodically in the human population (as it came and went during 2009), sometimes causing a bad pandemic and sometimes (as in 2009) not so bad as expected; but avian flu resides in a different category
of menacing possibility. It worries the flu scientists because they know that H5N1 influenza is extremely virulent in people, with a high lethality. As yet, there have been a relatively low number of cases, and it is poorly transmissible,
so far, from human to human. It'll kill you if you catch it, very likely, but you're unlikely to catch it except by butchering an infected chicken. But if H5N1 mutates or reassembles itself in just the right way, if it adapts for human-tohuman transmission, it could become the biggest and fastest killer disease since 1918. It got to Egypt in 2006 and has been especially problematic for that country. As of August 2011, there were 151 confirmed cases, of which 52
were fatal. That represents more than a quarter of all the world's known human cases of bird flu since H5N1 emerged in 1997. But here's a critical fact: those unfortunate Egyptian patients all seem to have acquired the virus directly
from birds. This indicates that the virus hasn't yet found an efficient way to pass from one person to another. Two aspects of the situation are dangerous, according to biologist Robert Webster. The first is that Egypt, given its recent
political upheavals, may be unable to staunch an outbreak of transmissible avian flu, if one occurs. His second concern is shared by influenza researchers and public health officials around the globe: with all that mutating, with all
that contact between people and their infected birds, the virus could hit upon a genetic configuration making it highly transmissible among people. "

in the world

As long as H5N1 is out there

there is the possibility of disaster

No other primate has ever weighed upon the planet
to anything like the degree we do
We are an
outbreak And here's the thing about outbreaks they end
," Webster told me, "

. . . There is the theoretical possibility that it can acquire the ability to transmit human-

to-human." He paused. "And then God help us." We're unique in the history of mammals.

. In ecological terms, we are almost paradoxical: large-bodied and long-lived but grotesquely abundant.

. In some cases they end after many years, in others they end rather soon. In

some cases they end gradually, in others they end with a crash. In certain cases, they end and recur and end again. Populations of tent caterpillars, for example, seem to rise steeply and fall sharply on a cycle of anywhere from five
to 11 years. The crash endings are dramatic, and for a long while they seemed mysterious. What could account for such sudden and recurrent collapses? One possible factor is infectious disease, and viruses in particular.

Bioterrorism risks extinction

Mhyrvold 13 Nathan Myhrvold founded Intellectual Ventures after retiring as chief strategist and chief
technology officer of Microsoft Corporation. During his 14 years at Microsoft, Nathan founded Microsoft Research
and numerous technology groups. He has always been an avid inventor. To date, he has been awarded hundreds of
patents and has hundreds of patents pending. Before joining Microsoft, Nathan was a postdoctoral fellow in the
department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics at Cambridge University, and he worked with Professor
Stephen Hawking. He earned a doctorate in theoretical and mathematical physics and a master's degree in
mathematical economics from Princeton University, and he also has a master's degree in geophysics and space
physics and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from UCLA. (Strategic Terrorism: A Call to Action, July 2013,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290382)
Even more so than with nuclear weapons,

the cost and technical difficulty of producing biological arms

has dropped precipitously in recent decades with the boom in industrial molecular biology. A small team of people
with the necessary technical training and some cheap equipment can create weapons far more terrible than any nuclear bomb.

these trends utterly undermine the lethalityversus-cost curve that existed throughout all of human history. Access to extremely lethal agentseven to those that may
Indeed, even a single individual might do so. Taken together,

exterminate the human racewill be available to nearly anybody. Access to mass death has been democratized; it has spread from
a small elite of superpower leaders to nearly anybody with modest resources. Even the leader of a ragtag, stateless group hiding in
a caveor in a Pakistani suburbcan potentially have the button. Turning Life Against the Living The first and simplest kinds of
biological weapons are those that are not contagious and thus do not lead to epidemics. These have been developed for use in
military conflicts for most of the 20th century. Because the pathogens used are not contagious, they are considered controllable:
that is, they have at least some of the command-and-control aspects of a conventional weapon. Typically, these pathogens have
been weaponized, meaning bred or refined for deployment by using artillery shells, aerial bombs, or missiles much like
conventional explosive warheads. They can be highly deadly. Anthrax is the most famous example. In several early- 20th-century
outbreaks, it killed nearly 90% of those infected by inhaling bacterial spores into their lungs. Anthrax was used in the series of mail
attacks in the United States in the fall of 2001. Even with advanced antibiotic treatment, 40% of those who contracted inhalational
anthrax died during the 2001 attacks.1 That crime is believed to have been the work of a lone bioweapons scientist who sought to
publicize the threat of a biological attack and boost funding for his work on anthrax vaccines. This conclusion is consistent with the
fact that virtually no effort was made to disperse the bacterium indeed, the letters carrying the spores thoughtfully included text
warning of anthrax exposure and recommending that the recipient seek immediate treatment. Despite this intentional effort to limit
rather than spread the infection, a surprising amount of trouble was caused when the fine anthrax powder leaked from envelopes
and contaminated other mail. Before this episode, nobody would have guessed that letters mailed in New Jersey to addresses in
Manhattan and Washington, D.C., could kill someone in Connecticut, but they did. And no one would have predicted that a domestic
bioterrorist launching multiple attacks, including one against the U.S. Congress, would elude the FBI for years. But that is what
happened. What if such an attack were made not by some vigilante trying to alert the world to the dangers of bioweapons but
instead by a real sociopath? Theodore J. Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, may have been such a person. He was
brilliant enough to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan yet was mentally disturbed enough to be a one-man
terrorist cell: His mail bombs claimed victims over nearly two decades. Kaczynski certainly had enough brains to use sophisticated
methods, but because he opposed advanced technology, he made untraceable low-tech bombs that killed only three people. A
future Kaczynski with training in microbiology and genetics, and an eagerness to use the destructive power of that science, could be
a threat to the entire human race. Indeed, the world has already experienced some true acts of biological terror. Aum Shinrikyo
produced botulinum toxin and anthrax and reportedly released them in Tokyo on four separate occasions. A variety of technical and
organizational difficulties frustrated these attacks, which did not cause any casualties and went unrecognized at the time for what
they were, until the later Sarin attack clued in the authorities.2 Had the group been a bit more competent, things could have turned
out far worse. One 2003 study found that an airborne release of one kilogram of an anthrax-spore-containing aerosol in a city the
size of New York would result in 1.5 million infections and 123,000 to 660,000 fatalities, depending on the effectiveness of the public
health response.3 A 1993 U.S. government analysis determined that 100 kilograms of weaponized anthrax, if sprayed from an
airplane upwind of Washington, D.C., would kill between 130,000 and three million people.4 Because anthrax spores remain viable
in the environment for more than 30 years,1 portions of a city blanketed by an anthrax cloud might have to be abandoned for years
while extensive cleaning was done. Producing enough anthrax to kill 100,000 Americans is far easier to doand far harder to detect
than is constructing a nuclear bomb of comparable lethality. Anthrax, moreover, is rather benign as biological weapons go. The
pathogen is reasonably well understood, having been studied in one form or another in biowarfare circles for more than 50 years.
Natural strains of the bacterium are partially treatable with long courses of common antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin if the
medication is taken sufficiently quickly, and vaccination soon after exposure seems to reduce mortality further.5 But bioengineered
anthrax that is resistant to both antibiotics and vaccines is known to have been produced in both Soviet and American bioweapons
laboratories. In 1997, a group of Russian scientists even openly published the recipe for one of these superlethal strains in a
scientific journal.6 In addition, numerous other agents are similar to anthrax in that they are highly lethal but not contagious. The
lack of contagion means that an attacker must administer the pathogen to the people he wishes to infect. In a military context, this

quality is generally seen as a good thing because the resulting disease can be contained in a specific area. Thus, the weapon can be

many biological
agents are communicable and so can spread beyond the people initially infected to affect the entire population.
Infectious pathogens are inherently hard to control because there is usually no reliable way to stop an
directed at a well-defined target, and with luck, little collateral damage will result. Unfortunately,

epidemic once it starts. This property makes such biological agents difficult to use as conventional weapons. A nation that starts an
epidemic may see it spread to the wrong countryor even to its own people. Indeed, one cannot target a small, well-defined
population with a contagious pathogen; by its nature, such a pathogen may infect the entire human race. Despite this rather severe
drawback, both the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as Imperial Japan, investigated and produced contagious
bioweapons. The logic was that their use in a military conflict would be limited to last-ditch, scorched earth campaigns, perhaps
with a vaccine available only to one side. Smallpox is the most famous example. It is highly contagious and spreads through casual
contact. Smallpox was eradicated in the wild in 1977, but it still exists in both U.S. and Russian laboratories, according to official
statements.7 Unofficial holdings are harder to track, but a number of countries, including North Korea, are believed to possess
covert smallpox cultures. Biological weapons were strictly regulated by international treaty in 1972. The United States and the
Soviet Union agreed not to develop such weapons and to destroy existing stocks. The United States stopped its bioweapons work,
but the Russians cheated and kept a huge program going into the 1990s, thereby producing thousands of tons of weaponized
anthrax, smallpox, and far more exotic biological weapons based on genetically engineered viruses. No one can be certain how far
either the germs or the knowledge has spread since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Experts estimate that a large-scale,
coordinated smallpox attack on the United States might kill 55,000 to 110,000 people, assuming that sufficient vaccine is available
to contain the epidemic and that the vaccine works.8, 9 The death toll may be far higher if the smallpox strain has been engineered
to be vaccine-resistant or to have enhanced virulence. Moreover, a smallpox attack on the United States could easily broaden into a
global pandemic, despite the U.S. stockpile of at least 300 million doses of vaccine. All it would take is for one infected person to
leave the country and travel elsewhere. If New York City were attacked with smallpox, infections would most likely appear on every
continent, except perhaps Antarctica, within two weeks. Once these beachheads were established, the epidemic would spread
almost without check because the vaccine in world stockpiles and the infrastructure to distribute it would be insufficient. That is
particularly true in the developing world, which is ill equipped to handle their current disease burden to say nothing of a return of
smallpox. Even if only 50,000 people were killed in the United States, a million or more would probably die worldwide before the
disease could be contained, and containment would probably require many years of effort. As horrible as this would be, such a
pandemic is by no means the worst attack one can imagine, for several reasons. First, most of the classic bioweapons are based on
1960s and 1970s technology because the 1972 treaty halted bioweapons development efforts in the United States and most other
Western countries. Second, the Russians, although solidly committed to biological weapons long after the treaty deadline, were

the science and technology of

molecular biology have made enormous advances , utterly transforming the field in the last few
never on the cutting edge of biological research. Third and most important,

decades. High school biology students routinely perform molecular-biology manipulations that would have been impossible even for
the best superpower-funded program back in the heyday of biological-weapons research. The biowarfare methods of the 1960s and
1970s are now as antiquated as the lumbering mainframe computers of that era. Tomorrows terrorists will have vastly more deadly

in 2001, Australian researchers working on

mousepox, a nonlethal virus that infects mice (as chickenpox does in humans), accidentally discovered that a
simple genetic modification transformed the virus.10, 11 Instead of producing mild symptoms, the new
bugs to choose from. Consider this sobering development:

virus killed 60% of even those mice already immune to the naturally occurring strains of mousepox. The new virus, moreover, was
unaffected by any existing vaccine or antiviral drug. A team of researchers at Saint Louis University led by Mark Buller picked up on
that work and, by late 2003, found a way to improve on it: Bullers variation on mousepox was 100% lethal, although his team of
investigators also devised combination vaccine and antiviral therapies that were partially effective in protecting animals from the
engineered strain.12, 13 Another saving grace is that the genetically altered virus is no longer contagious. Of course, it is quite
possible that future tinkering with the virus will change that property, too. Strong reasons exist to believe that the genetic
modifications Buller made to mousepox would work for other poxviruses and possibly for other classes of viruses as well. Might the
same techniques allow chickenpox or another poxvirus that infects humans to be turned into a 100% lethal bioweapon, perhaps one
that is resistant to any known antiviral therapy? Ive asked this question of experts many times, and no one has yet replied that such

Many more are pouring out of scientific

journals and conferences every year. Just last year, the journal Nature published a controversial study done
at the University of WisconsinMadison in which virologists enumerated the changes one would
need to make to a highly lethal strain of bird flu to make it easily transmitted from one mammal to another.14
a manipulation couldnt be done. This case is just one example.

Biotechnology is advancing so rapidly that it is hard to keep track of all the new potential threats. Nor is it clear that anyone is even
trying. In addition to lethality and drug resistance, many other parameters can be played with, given that the infectious power of an
epidemic depends on many properties, including the length of the latency period during which a person is contagious but
asymptomatic. Delaying the onset of serious symptoms allows each new case to spread to more people and thus makes the virus
harder to stop. This dynamic is perhaps best illustrated by HIV, which is very difficult to transmit compared with smallpox and many
other viruses. Intimate contact is needed, and even then, the infection rate is low. The balancing factor is that HIV can take years to
progress to AIDS, which can then take many more years to kill the victim. What makes HIV so dangerous is that infected people have
lots of opportunities to infect others. This property has allowed HIV to claim more than 30 million lives so far, and approximately 34
million people are now living with this virus and facing a highly uncertain future.15 A virus genetically engineered to infect its host
quickly, to generate symptoms slowlysay, only after weeks or monthsand to spread easily through the air or by casual contact
would be vastly more devastating than HIV . It could silently penetrate the population to unleash its deadly effects suddenly. This
type of epidemic would be almost impossible to combat because most of the infections would occur before the epidemic became
obvious. A technologically sophisticated terrorist group could develop such a virus and kill a large part of humanity with it. Indeed,
terrorists may not have to develop it themselves: some scientist may do so first and publish the details. Given the rate at which
biologists are making discoveries about viruses and the immune system, at some point in the near future,

create artificial pathogens that

could

someone may

drive the human race to extinction . Indeed,

a detailed species-elimination plan of this nature was openly proposed in a scientific journal. The ostensible purpose of that
particular research was to suggest a way to extirpate the malaria mosquito, but similar techniques could be directed toward
humans.16 When Ive talked to molecular biologists about this method, they are quick to point out that it is slow and easily

detectable and could be fought with biotech remedies. If you challenge them to come up with improvements to the suggested
attack plan, however, they have plenty of ideas. Modern biotechnology will soon be capable, if it is not already, of bringing about the
demise of the human race or at least of killing a sufficient number of people to end high-tech civilization and set humanity back
1,000 years or more. That terrorist groups could achieve this level of technological sophistication may seem far-fetched, but keep in
mind that it takes only a handful of individuals to accomplish these tasks. Never has lethal power of this
potency been accessible to so few, so easily. Even more dramatically than nuclear proliferation, modern biological science has
frighteningly undermined the correlation between the lethality of a weapon and its cost, a fundamentally stabilizing mechanism
throughout history. Access to extremely lethal agentslethal enough to exterminate Homo sapienswill be available to anybody
with a solid background in biology, terrorists included. The 9/11 attacks involved at least four pilots, each of whom had sufficient
education to enroll in flight schools and complete several years of training. Bin Laden had a degree in civil engineering. Mohammed
Atta attended a German university, where he earned a masters degree in urban planningnot a field he likely chose for its

A future set of terrorists could just as easily be students of molecular

biology who enter their studies innocently enough but later put their skills to homicidal use. Hundreds of universities in Europe
relevance to terrorism.

and Asia have curricula sufficient to train people in the skills necessary to make a sophisticated biological weapon, and hundreds
more in the United States accept students from all over the world. Thus it seems likely that sometime in the near future a small
band of terrorists, or even a single misanthropic individual, will overcome our best defenses and do something truly terrible, such as
fashion a bioweapon that could kill millions or even billions of people. Indeed,

the creation of such

weapons within the next 20 years seems to be a virtual certainty . The

repercussions of their use are hard to estimate. One approach is to look at how the scale of destruction they may cause compares
with that of other calamities that the human race has faced.

Turns are epistemologically flawed- they reflect a coercive

mentality the only harms farmers
Smith Thomas No Date (Heather Smith Thomas- author of 20 books and
thousands of articles on animal health care, The NAIS Controversy
Part I, http://www.dairygoatjournal.com/84-6/heather_smith_thomas/ )
Government intrusion into our lives/Control of animal agriculture The greatest
advantage America has over most other countries is our personal freedom and a
free market system. Government involvement in free enterprise has always been
detrimental, except when needed to ensure consumer and workplace safety and fair competition. But the
NAIS (which seems to have been created to protect international markets and give unfair advantage to certain
players in industry) is being forced on us in the guise of disease prevention. We were doing a good job of
that already. The NAIS is not fair, nor necessary. It is un-American to impose a
mandatory ID system on everyone who owns a farm animal . In essence this creates a
tax on animal agriculture or requires us to "buy a license" to own an animal , since
ultimately it would be illegal to not comply. Centralized control of agriculture is dictatorship, not
free enterprise. The NAIS intrudes on our free enterprise system, our property rights
and personal property, and in some instances our religious freedom. There are some
religious groups who use animals for their own use and livelihood who do not
believe in using modern technology like microchips or computers. And who will enforce the
NAIS? Not everyone will comply, even if it becomes mandatory. Can the USDA make us do it? A
growing number of people are taking an in-depth look at the NAIS plan, questioning not only whether it will work or
be cost effective, but whether it is legal or constitutional (and whether the USDA even considered cheaper and

The NAIS may violate the Fourth Amendment because USDA

wants surveillance of every premises where even a single animal of any livestock
species is kept, and wants RFID for every animal . There are millions of people who own a few
more practical alternatives).

chickens or goats, or raise a lamb or steer for themselves (or as a 4-H project) or have a horse. In these instances

the premises the USDA wants to target with GPA surveillance are homes . NAIS would be
intrusive to people who have done nothing more than own an animal, which is their right, under U.S. law. Forcing
registration and having information about your private property (premises and animals) in
a huge database is also a violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Property rights are protected by our Constitution. No one can be deprived of
property without due process of law. But the NAIS says USDA can remove untagged
animals from a premises, with no mention of compensation for the owner.
Government does not have the right, according to the Constitution, to come onto

your property to inspect or tag your animal.

Some states are starting to drag their feet on the NAIS

plan, even a few of the states that were initially pushing ahead with premises registration. Representative Frank
Nicely (Republican, Tennessee) introduced a bill that would let Tennessee opt out of the RFID cattle tracking system;
he said the NAIS is not a good idea except for the people who are manufacturing radio tags. With the rising
opposition to NAIS, the USDA may not be as confident now about making all states implement the program, even
with funding bribes, and has decided to address the NAIS in the 2007 Farm Bill. The bureaucrats and big business
interests who designed the NAIS are now lobbying Congress to get the program implemented. A groundswell of
opposition is also bombarding Congress, and this has become a hot political issue in recent months. USDA Secretary
Johanns claims that USDA has the authority to make the system mandatory, even without Congress passing
legislation to that effect, so it will be interesting to see how this drama unfolds. Using Any Means to Gain the Goal In
the push to convince animal owners to use the ISO frequency chips or ear tags,

facts have been ignored

or twisted to influence people that this is a better system

(in spite of its documented flaws

and shortcomings) than our American chip frequency system, and we are also told it is the accepted universal,

Even scarier than these distortions, half-truths and

"spins," however, are efforts to coerce us into thinking that the only way to
protect ourselves from foreign disease or bio-terrorism is to embrace the NAIS
system in its entirety (100 percent cooperation). On August 29, after an article appeared on the nonais.org
international system, when it is not.

website about the state of Vermont halting premises registration, a comment was left on the website from someone
pretending to be a terrorist. The comment read: "Thanks, Vermont, for opening an avenue for those that wish to use
animal disease as a bio-eco-terrorism tool. We would have tried to start along the SW border but thats now just too
obvious. Thanks! Well take the NE corner and work our way in that way. ABET" When a comment is made,
however, the website software records the IP address of the commenter. The owner of the nonaois.org site was able
to track it down, with some help from OrgAbuse personnel. The comment came from the USDA Office of Operations,
Office of the Chief Information Officer. This raises several questions. Is

someone in the USDA

threatening terrorism in order to justify the NAIS ? Is some disgruntled USDA employee unhappy
that many farmers are not accepting the NAIS, after all the hard work on it? Would some stoop so low as to actually
pose as terrorists (or worse, commit an act of terrorism that might be blamed on another country) to scare
Americans into thinking we really need the NAIS? This is no idle concern, considering that in todays world the
control of food production has become political. As stated by Leo M. Schwartz (Chairman of the Virginia Land Rights

the NAIS has nothing to do with national

security, disease control or food safety. "It is land, livestock and people regulation,
an industrial, inventory-tracking and control scheme , and a public- private
partnership racket designed to license agriculture and bring the food supply system
under the boot of centralized power. Regulatory burdens and costs, corporate
monopolies, taxation and fees, liability, religious, property and privacy rights are
serious concerns. But NAIS runs much deeper . Centralized control of
Coalition) in his July 7, 2006 article "National Animal ID,"

agriculture is a mark of despotism ," said Schwartz. He quoted Zimbabwes Marxist dictator,
Robert Mugabe (who "nationalized" 95 percent of that countrys rural land and plunged Africas leading food
producing nation into chaos) who said, "Absolute power is when a man [person] is starving and you are the only one
able to give him [them] food." Food is power. Food is a weapon. Schwartz raised questions about the
UKs outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2001 in which some six million healthy sheep, cows, pigs and goats
(including rare breeds) were slaughtered without justification, completely devastating British agriculture. Farmers
were unable to defend their property, and the forced quarantine held them prisoner on their own land. British
veterinarian Bob Michell later wrote, recalling the mass culling, "In

the name of veterinary disease

control we were about to embark on the greatest unnecessary slaughter of healthy
animals in the history of our professionand the unnecessary suffering of those on whose farms they lived, or

whose livelihoods evaporated in the smoking pyres." The cost of all this, according to Schwartz was more than 12
billion pounds, 60 farmer suicides "and a nation further conditioned to accept the security and safety of militarized
police-state control."

Exports
Advantage 2 is exports
Lack of traceability greatly hurts U.S. meat exports
Schroeder and Tonsor 11(Ted C. Schroeder - Professor Agricultural

Economics and Director Center for Risk Management Education and Research at
Kansas State University, and Glynn T. Tonsor -Associate Professor Agricultural
Economics at Kansas State University, Cattle Identification and Traceability:
Implications for United States Beef Exports,
http://www.agmanager.info/livestock/marketing/AnimalID/KSU_FactSheet_SchroederT
onsor_9-12-11.pdf)
Meat importing countries are adopting animal traceability systems similar to those of major exporters. Animal

Consumers in
European and Asian markets are increasingly requiring animal traceability, access to
animal movement records, and producer identification as a means for developing
trust in food safety assurances. Consequently, these countries will likely continue to
add traceability requirements on their international suppliers . Access to these
disease control and food safety assurances highlight the main goals of these systems.

markets will increasingly depend upon demonstrated individual animal

traceability. Furthermore, assuring animal age, either through traceability or
dentition, is essential for access to many major importers especially for
countries such as the United States and Canada who have OIE controlled BSE
status. Information was collected regarding the status of market access requirements to illustrate the U.S.

competitive position relative to major competing exporters and important importing countries. Table 2 summarizes
trade requirements for selected major export and import countries. The United States, Canada, and Brazil share the
same BSE status of controlled risk in OIE (World Animal Health Organization) classification whereas Australia, New
Zealand, and Argentina enjoy negligible risk. Several important observations arise from the review of trade status
summarized in table 2. The United States faces an array of trade restrictions related to animal age and export
verification requirements to many key export market destinations. Most of these restrictions surfaced following the
BSE discovery in the United States cattle herd in late 2003. In contrast, Australia and New Zealand face no
restrictions on beef exports to important US export customers. Brazil and Argentina face some restrictions because
of FMD, but also have no restrictions related to animal age verification. [Table omitted] [table omitted]
Requirements for US beef exports to major importers are complicated by varying market access requirements. For
example, maximum age requirements are common but vary, country-specific export verification programs are often
required, different requirements and definitions exist across countries relative to specified risk material (SRM), some
programs require tracing to farm of origin, and EU requires non-hormone treated cattle (NHTC) verification. The
myriad of age and source verification requirements for U.S. beef export market access has been mostly met by the
use of voluntary USDA age and source certification and related export verification programs. However, only about
10% of fed cattle slaughtered in the United States currently are being produced under a USDA age and source
verified program. The varied market access requirements make sorting beef products a challenge that would be
easier met with animal identification and traceability. Certainly, Australia and New Zealand have comparative
advantages of having less cumbersome export market access requirements. Relative to the other major exporters
in table 2, the U.S. animal identification system is the least developed. Therefore, export market access restrictions
based on ID and traceability requirements will place the U.S. beef industry at a competitive disadvantage.
Additionally, if the United States suffers an animal disease outbreak, the

lack of traceability could

again contribute to a long-term disruption in U.S. beef exports, at

tremendous costs to the United States industry.

Fear of disease could stop US exports

CME 15 (Chicago Mercantile Exchange & Chicago Board of Trade, CME: US Meat

Exports Facing Significant Headwinds,

http://www.thepoultrysite.com/poultrynews/34391/cme-us-meat-exports-facingsignificant-headwinds/ ,18 February 2015)
US - US meat exports are facing significant headwinds at this time, be this due to the sharp
increase in the value of the US dollar, lower prices for competing meats in other countries and the slowdown strike

there is always the risk of markets

closing their doors due to disease outbreaks. Canada announced yesterday that it had found
in West Coast ports, write Steve Meyer and Len Steiner. And then

another case of BSE, which prompted South Korea to close its doors. But the impact from that will be minimal. South
Korea does not purchase much beef from Canada and it is unlikely that the Canadian case will affect current US

should we find a case of BSE in

the US, it could in the short term cause some markets to close their doors. It is a risk.
Then there is the spread of avian flu in the US West Coast. There have been cases of
the highly pathogenic H5N8 avian influenza in Washington State and California.
Some countries have imposed limited export bans but China is the only major
importer to impose a complete ban on US poultry shipments. But it remains to be seen
exports to the South Korean market. But the case does highlight that

how other countries respond now that a second case of bird flu is found in a California, especially since this time it
was found in a commercial operation. Most US poultry production is located in the South and Southeastern part of
the US and there have been no indications of cases of bird flu there. Still,

there is a risk that if the

disease spreads in other states, we could see a more forceful reaction from

our trading partners . Mexico in the past has blocked US poultry shipments due to bird flu concerns
and Mexico today is a much more important market than it was 10 years ago. Back then (2005), Mexico accounted
for about 10 per cent of US chicken exports. Last year, Mexico represented 21 per cent of all US chicken exports
and, at 154 million pounds (CWE), it also represented about 2.7 per cent of all US chicken production. This is a very
important market for US chicken and it bears watching how they respond to the new cases of avian flu cropping up.

Some
countries may find this an opportune time to ban US shipments and use the
outbreak of avian influenza as an excuse . And we need all the exports we can get considering
Poultry supplies are expanding globally and a strong US dollar also is working against our exports.

the supply of chicken coming to market today and expectations for higher production in the spring and summer.

Argentina proves - lack of exports reduces meat production

Queck 13 (Paul Queck- freelance ag writer based in Indianapolis, Argentina

Provides A Lesson In How to Ruin a Beef Industry , http://beefmagazine.com/beefexports/argentina-provides-lesson-how-ruin-beef-industry, Sep 26, 2013)
That was seven years ago. USDA reports that Argentina exported only 164,000 mt of beef in
2012, slipping to 11th place as a global beef exporter. Per-capita beef consumption
has declined to 121 lbs./year. And during those same seven years, U.S. beef exports have increased from
472,668 mt to more than 1.13 million mt. Argentinas beef export decline is a welcome development to American
cattlemen. After all, the less beef the Argentinians offer for the world market, the less competition for our U.S. beef

But Argentinas problems also serve as a warning for just how quickly bad
government policies can cripple [undermine] an industry. In March 2006, Argentinas
government in an effort to lower the rising price of beef to its people banned beef exports for 180
days. It followed that up by imposing a 15% export tax on fresh beef a tax thats still in force. The export tax
choked off exports and domestic beef prices dropped . The government assumed
ranchers and farmers would continue to raise cheap beef . But instead, they cut their
exports.

herds and converted their pastures to soybean production which

was more profitable than raising cattle for the artificially depressed beef
market. Soybean acres increased in Argentina from 37.6 million acres in 2005 to

more than 48 million acres in 2012 mostly gaining those new acres from pasture and other crops,
such as corn. The national beef herd dropped from 54.26 million head in 2009 to 49.59
million head in 2012. In addition to raising fewer cattle, farmers and ranchers also freed up land for crops by
finishing cattle in feedlots instead of producing the grass-fed beef for which the country had been famous.

U.S. meat exports displace local farmers-creating huge poverty

-Mexico proves
Bacon 12 (David Bacon-Award-winning photojournalist, author, and immigrant
rights activist ,How US Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration
,http://www.thenation.com/article/165438/how-us-policies-fueled-mexicos-greatmigration , January 4, 2012 )

Roberto Ortega tried to make a living slaughtering pigs in Veracruz, Mexico. In my town, Las Choapas, after I killed
a pig, I would cut it up to sell the meat, he recalls. But in the late 1990s, after the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) opened up Mexican markets to massive pork imports from US companies like Smithfield Foods,
Ortega and other small-scale butchers in Mexico were devastated by the drop in prices. Whatever I could do to
make money, I did, Ortega explains. But I could never make enough for us to survive. In 1999 he came to the
United States, where he again slaughtered pigs for a living. This time, though, he did it as a worker in the worlds

Smithfieldthe same company

whose imports helped to drive small butchers like him out of business in Mexico. David
largest pork slaughterhouse, in Tar Heel, North Carolina. His new employer?

Ceja, another immigrant from Veracruz who wound up in Tar Heel, recalls, Sometimes the price of a pig was
enough to buy what we needed, but then it wasnt. Farm prices were always going down. We couldnt pay for
electricity, so wed just use candles. Everyone was hurting almost all the time. Ceja remembers that his family had
ten cows, as well as pigs and chickens, when he was growing up. Even then, he still had to work, and they
sometimes went hungry. But we could give milk to people who came asking for it. There were people even worse
off than us, he recalls. In 1999, when Ceja was 18, he left his familys farm in Martinez de la Torre, in northern
Veracruz. His parents sold four cows and two hectares of land, and came up with enough money to get him to the
border. There he found a coyote who took him across for $1,200. I didnt really want to leave, but I felt I had to, he
remembers. I was afraid, but our need was so great. He arrived in Texas, still owing for the passage. I couldnt
find work for three months. I was desperate, he says. He feared the consequences if he couldnt pay, and took
whatever work he could find until he finally reached North Carolina. There friends helped him get a real job at
Smithfields Tar Heel packinghouse. The boys I played with as a kid are all in the US, he says. Id see many of
them working in the plant. North Carolina became the number-one US destination for Veracruzs displaced farmers.
Many got jobs at Smithfield, and some, like Ortega and Ceja, helped lead the sixteen-year fight that finally brought
in a union there. But they paid a high price. Asserting their rights also made them the targets of harsh immigration

The experience of
Veracruz migrants reveals a close connection between US investment and trade
deals in Mexico and the displacement and migration of its people. For nearly two
decades, Smithfield has used NAFTA and the forces it unleashed to become the worlds largest
packer and processor of hogs and pork . But the conditions in Veracruz that
enforcement and a growing wave of hostility toward Mexicans in the American South.

helped Smithfield make high profits plunged thousands of rural

residents into poverty . Tens of thousands left Mexico, many eventually helping
Smithfields bottom line once again by working for low wages on its US meatpacking
lines. The free trade agreement was the cause of our problems, Ceja says. Smithfield Goes to Mexicoand
Migrants Come Here In 1993 Carroll Foods, a giant hog-raising corporation , partnered with a
Mexican agribusiness enterprise to set up a huge pig farm known as Granjas Carroll de Mexico
(GCM) in Veracruzs Perote Valley. Smithfield, which had a longtime partnership with Carroll Foods, bought
the company out in 1999. [image omitted] By 2008 the Perote operation was sending close to a million
pigs to slaughter every year85 percent to Mexico City and the rest to surrounding Mexican states. Because of its
location in the mountains above the city of Veracruz, Mexicos largest port, the operation could easily receive
imported corn for feed, which makes up two-thirds of the cost of raising hogs.

NAFTA lifted the barriers on

Smithfields ability to import feed. This gave it an enormous advantage

over Mexican producers , as US corn, heavily subsidized by US farm bills, was much cheaper. After
NAFTA, says Timothy Wise, of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, US corn was

NAFTA
allowed it to import pork as well. According to Alejandro Ramrez, general director of the Confederation
priced 19 percent below the cost of production. But Smithfield didnt just import feed into Mexico.

of Mexican Pork Producers, Mexico imported 30,000 tons of pork in 1995, the year after NAFTA took effect. By 2010

As a
result, pork prices received by Mexican producers dropped 56 percent. US pork
exports are dominated by the largest companies. Wise estimates that Smithfields share of this
export market is significantly greater than its 27 percent share of US production. Imported pork had a
dramatic effect on Mexican jobs. We lost 4,000 pig farms , Ramrez estimates, based on
pork imports, almost all from the United States, had grown more than twenty-five times, to 811,000 tons.

reports received by the confederation from its members. On Mexican farms, each 100 animals produce five jobs, so
we lost 20,000 farm jobs directly from imports. Counting the five indirect jobs dependent on each direct job,

we

lost over 120,000 jobs in total. That produces migration to the US or to

Mexican cities, Ramrez charges. Corn imports also rose, from 2 million to 10.3 million tons from 1992 to
2008. Small Mexican farmers got hit with a double whammy, Wise explains. On the one hand, competitors were

Smithfield was both producer and

importer. Wise estimates that this one company supplies 25 percent of all the pork
sold in Mexico. The increases in pork and corn imports were among many economic changes brought about by
NAFTA and concurrent neoliberal reforms to the Mexican economy, such as ending land reform. Companies
like Smithfield benefited from these changes, but poverty increased also, especially in
the countryside. In a 2005 study for the Mexican government, the World Bank found that the extreme rural
importing pork. On the other, they were producing cheaper hogs.

poverty rate of 35 percent in 199294, before NAFTA, jumped to 55 percent in 199698, after NAFTA took effect
the years when Ortega and Ceja left Mexico. This could be explained, the report said, mainly by the 1995 economic

By
2010, according to the Monterrey Institute of Technology, 53 million Mexicans were
living in poverty half the countrys population. About 20 percent live
crisis, the sluggish performance of agriculture, stagnant rural wages, and falling real agricultural prices.

in extreme poverty , almost all in rural areas. The growth of poverty, in turn,
fueled migration. In 1990, 4.5 million Mexican-born people lived in the United
States. A decade later, that population had more than doubled to 9.75 million, and
in 2008 it peaked at 12.67 million. About 5.7 million were able to get some kind of
visa; another 7 million couldnt but came nevertheless. As an agricultural state, Veracruz
suffered from Mexicos abandonment of two important policies, which also helped fuel migration. First, neoliberal
reforms did away with Tabamex, a national marketing program for small tobacco farmers. A similar program for
coffee growers ended just as world coffee prices plunged to record lows. Second, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the
countrys corrupt president, pushed through changes to Article 27 of the Constitution in 1992, dismantling land

Waves of tobacco and

coffee farmers sold their land because they could no longer make a living on it.
Many became migrants. But allowing the sale of ejidos to foreigners made it possible for Carroll Foods to
reform and allowing the sale of ejidos, or common lands, as private property.

buy land for its swine sheds. Displaced farmers then went to work in those sheds at low wages. Simultaneous
changes in the United States also accelerated migration. The Immigration Reform and Control Act, passed by
Congress in 1986, expanded the existing H2-A visa program, creating the current H2-A program, which allows US
agricultural employers to bring in workers from Mexico and other countries, giving them temporary visas tied to
employment contracts. Growers in North Carolina became large users of the program, especially through the North
Carolina Growers Association. Landless tobacco farmers from Veracruz became migrant tobacco workers in the
Carolinas. Many Veracruzanos came because we were offered work in the tobacco fields, where we had
experience, remembers Miguel Huerta. Then people whod been contracted just stayed, because they didnt have
anything in Mexico to go back to. After the tobacco harvest, workers spread out to other industries. From Huertas
perspective, these

companies are very powerful . They can go to Mexico and

bring as many employees as they want and replace them when they want .

Poverty, though, was the real recruiter.

It created, as Ceja says, the need. We

all

had to leave Veracruz because of it, he emphasizes. Otherwise, we wouldnt do something so hard.

U.S. meat exports displacement of local farmers has

devastating environmental consequences
Bacon 12 (David Bacon-Award-winning photojournalist, author, and immigrant
rights activist ,How US Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration
,http://www.thenation.com/article/165438/how-us-policies-fueled-mexicos-greatmigration , January 4, 2012 )
Hog raising is a dirty businessand the environmental damage it creates has
provoked rising opposition to Smithfields operations within US borders . In Virginia in

1997, federal judge Rebecca Smith imposed the largest federal pollution fine to that date$12.6 millionon the

That year the

state of North Carolina went further, passing a moratorium on the creation of any
new open-air hog waste lagoons and a cap on production at its Tar Heel plant . In 2000
company for dumping pig excrement into the Pagan River, which runs into Chesapeake Bay.

thenState Attorney General Mike Easley forced Smithfield to fund research by North Carolina State University to

Despite North
Carolinas well-known hostility to regulating business, in 2007 Easley (by then governor)
made the moratorium permanent. In the face of public outcry over stench and flies,
even the anti-regulation industry association , the North Carolina Pork Council,
supported it. [image omitted] In Mexicos Perote Valley, howevera high, arid, volcanorimmed basin straddling the states of Veracruz and PueblaSmithfield could
operate unburdened by the environmental restrictions that increasingly hampered
its expansion in the United States. Mexico has environmental standards, and NAFTA
supposedly has a procedure for requiring their enforcement, but no complaint was ever filed against
GCM or Smithfield under NAFTAs environmental side agreement . Carolina Ramirez, who
heads the womens department of the Veracruz Human Rights Commission, concluded bitterly that the
company can do here what it cant do at home. For local farmers like Fausto Limon, the
hog operation was devastating. On some warm nights his children would wake up and vomit from the
develop treatment methods for hog waste that are more effective than open lagoons.

smell. Hed put his wife, two sons and daughter into his beat-up pickup, and theyd drive away from his farm until
they could breathe without getting sick. Then hed park, and theyd sleep in the truck for the rest of the night.
Limon and his family all had painful kidney ailments for three years. He says they kept taking medicine until finally
a doctor told them to stop drinking water from the farms well. Last May they began hauling in bottled water. Once
they stopped drinking from the well, the infections stopped. Less than half a mile from his house is one of the many
pig farms built by Smithfields Mexican hog-raising subsidiary, GCM. Before the pig farms came, they said they
would bring jobs, Limon remembers. But then we found out the reality.

Yes, there were jobs, but they

also brought a lot of contamination.

David Torres, a Perote native who spent eight years in the

operations maternity section, estimates that GCM has eighty complexes, each with as many as 20,000 hogs. The
sheds look clean and modern. When I went to work there, I could see the company was completely mechanized,
he says. The Mexican News online business journal explains that production cost is very low because of the high
ratio of pigs to workers. The preparation of food and feeding of the pigs is completely automated, along with
temperature control and the elimination of excrement. Workers arent employed directly by Granjas Carroll,
however, according to Torres. Since

we work for a contractor, were not entitled to profit-

sharing or company benefits, he says. Granjas Carroll made millions of dollars in profits, but never
distributed a part of them to the workers, as required under Mexicos federal labor law. Torres was paid 1,250
pesos ($90) every fifteen days; he says the company picked him up at 6 every morning and returned him home at

In back of each complex is a large oxidation pond for

the hogs urine and excrement. A recent drive through the valley revealed that only one of
several dozen was covered. Granjas Carroll doesnt use concrete or membranes under their ponds,
Torres charges, so the water table is getting contaminated. People here get their water
from wells, which are surrounded by pig farms and oxidation ponds . Ruben Lopez, a land
5:30 each evening, often six days a week.

commissioner in Chichicuautla, a valley town surrounded by hog farms, also says there is no membrane beneath
the pools. In response to an article published in August in Imagen de Veracruz, a Veracruz newspaper, GCM public
relations director Tito Tablada Corts declared, Granjas Carroll does not pollute. And Smithfield spokeswoman Amy
Richards says, Our environmental treatment systems in Mexico strictly comply with local and federal regulations.

Yet despite the 1,200 jobs

the pig farms created in a valley where employment is scarce, Limon estimates that
a third of the young people have left. They dont see a future, and every year its harder to live
Mexico encourages, and requires, anaerobic digesters and evaporation ponds.

here, he says. In 2004 a coalition of local farmers called Pueblos Unidos (United Towns) started collecting
signatures for a petition to protest the expansion of the swine sheds. According to teacher Veronica Hernandez,
students told her that going to school on the bus was like riding in a toilet. Some of them fainted or got
headaches, she charges. When expansion plans moved forward nonetheless, on April 26, 2005, hundreds of people
blocked the main highway. That November a construction crew about to build another shed and oxidation pond was
met by 1,000 angry farmers. Police had to rescue the crew. Finally, in 2007 GCMs Tablada Corts signed an
agreement with local towns blocking any new expansion. That year, however, the company filed criminal
complaints against Hernandez and thirteen other leaders, charging them with defaming the company. Although
the charges were eventually dropped, the farmers were intimidated and the protest movement diminished. [image

Then, in early 2009, the first confirmed case of swine flu, the AH1N1 virus,
was found in a 5-year-old boy, dgar Hernndez from La Gloria. Pickup trucks from the local health
department began spraying pesticide in the streets to kill the omnipresent flies.
Nevertheless, the virus spread to Mexico City. By May, forty-five people in Mexico had died. Schools
omitted]

closed, and public events were canceled.

Environmental degradation risks extinction- the risk is linear

err aff
Coyne 7 (Jerry and Hopi Hoekstra , *professor in the Department of Ecology and
Evolution at the University of Chicago AND Associate Professor in the Department of
Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, New Republic, The
Greatest Dying, 9/24, http://www.truthout.org/article/jerry-coyne-and-hopi-ehoekstra-the-greatest-dying)
But it isn't just the destruction of the rainforests that should trouble us. Healthy ecosystems the world over
provide hidden services like waste disposal, nutrient cycling, soil formation, water
purification, and oxygen production. Such services are best rendered by ecosystems that are diverse.
Yet, through both intention and accident, humans have introduced exotic species that turn biodiversity into
monoculture. Fast-growing zebra mussels, for example, have outcompeted more than 15 species of native mussels
in North America's Great Lakes and have damaged harbors and water-treatment plants. Native prairies are
becoming dominated by single species (often genetically homogenous) of corn or wheat. Thanks to these
developments,

soils will erode and become unproductive - which , along with temperature
will diminish agricultural yields. Meanwhile, with increased pollution and runoff, as well as
reduced forest cover, ecosystems will no longer be able to purify water; and a shortage of
clean water spells disaster. In many ways, oceans are the most vulnerable areas of all. As overfishing
eliminates major predators, while polluted and warming waters kill off phytoplankton, the intricate aquatic
food web could collapse from both sides. Fish, on which so many humans depend, will be
a fond memory. As phytoplankton vanish, so does the ability of the oceans to absorb
carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. (Half of the oxygen we breathe is made by
phytoplankton, with the rest coming from land plants.) Species extinction is also imperiling
coral reefs - a major problem since these reefs have far more than recreational value: They provide
tremendous amounts of food for human populations and buffer coastlines against
erosion. In fact, the global value of "hidden" services provided by ecosystems - those services, like waste
change,

disposal, that aren't bought and sold in the marketplace - has been estimated to be as much as $50 trillion per
year, roughly equal to the gross domestic product of all countries combined. And that doesn't include tangible
goods like fish and timber. Life as we know it would be impossible if ecosystems collapsed. Yet that is where we're
heading if species extinction continues at its current pace. Extinction also has a huge impact on medicine. Who
really cares if, say, a worm in the remote swamps of French Guiana goes extinct? Well, those who suffer from
cardiovascular disease. The recent discovery of a rare South American leech has led to the isolation of a powerful
enzyme that, unlike other anticoagulants, not only prevents blood from clotting but also dissolves existing clots.
And it's not just this one species of worm: Its wriggly relatives have evolved other biomedically valuable proteins,
including antistatin (a potential anticancer agent), decorsin and ornatin (platelet aggregation inhibitors), and hirudin
(another anticoagulant). Plants, too, are pharmaceutical gold mines. The bark of trees, for example, has given us
quinine (the first cure for malaria), taxol (a drug highly effective against ovarian and breast cancer), and aspirin.
More than a quarter of the medicines on our pharmacy shelves were originally derived from plants. The sap of the
Madagascar periwinkle contains more than 70 useful alkaloids, including vincristine, a powerful anticancer drug that
saved the life of one of our friends. Of the roughly 250,000 plant species on Earth, fewer than 5 percent have been
screened for pharmaceutical properties. Who knows what life-saving drugs remain to be discovered? Given current
extinction rates, it's estimated that we're losing one valuable drug every two years. Our arguments so far have

tacitly assumed that species are worth saving only in proportion to their economic value and their effects on our
quality of life, an attitude that is strongly ingrained, especially in Americans. That is why conservationists always
base their case on an economic calculus. But we biologists know in our hearts that there are deeper and equally
compelling reasons to worry about the loss of biodiversity: namely, simple morality and intellectual values that
transcend pecuniary interests. What, for example, gives us the right to destroy other creatures? And what could be
more thrilling than looking around us, seeing that we are surrounded by our evolutionary cousins, and realizing that
we all got here by the same simple process of natural selection? To biologists, and potentially everyone else,
apprehending the genetic kinship and common origin of all species is a spiritual experience - not necessarily
religious, but spiritual nonetheless, for it stirs the soul. But, whether or not one is moved by such concerns, it is

our future is bleak if we do nothing to stem this sixth extinction. We are

creating a world in which exotic diseases flourish but natural medicinal cures are
lost; a world in which carbon waste accumulates while food sources dwindle ; a world
of sweltering heat, failing crops, and impure water . In the end, we must accept the
possibility that we ourselves are not immune to extinction. Or, if we survive, perhaps only a
few of us will remain, scratching out a grubby existence on a devastated planet. Global warming will seem
like a secondary problem when humanity finally faces the consequences of what we
have done to nature: not just another Great Dying, but perhaps the greatest dying
of them all.
certain that

No War
No scenario for great power war laundry list
Deudney and Ikenberry 9 (Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins
AND Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton
University (Jan/Feb, 2009, Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry, The Myth of the
Autocratic Revival: Why Liberal Democracy Will Prevail, Foreign Affairs)
This bleak outlook is based on an exaggeration of recent developments and ignores powerful countervailing factors and

the most striking features of the

contemporary international landscape are the intensification of economic
globalization , thickening institutions , and shared problems of
interdependence . The overall structure of the international system today is quite unlike that
of the nineteenth century. Compared to older orders, the contemporary liberalcentered international order provides a set of constraints and opportunities-of
pushes and pulls-that reduce the likelihood of severe conflict while
creating strong imperatives for cooperative problem solving . Those invoking the
nineteenth century as a model for the twenty-first also fail to acknowledge the extent to which war as a path to
conflict resolution and great-power expansion has become largely obsolete . Most
important, nuclear weapons have transformed great-power war from a routine feature of
international politics into an exercise in national suicide . With all of the great powers
possessing nuclear weapons and ample means to rapidly expand their deterrent forces, warfare
among these states has truly become an option of last resort. The prospect of
such great losses has instilled in the great powers a level of caution and
restraint that effectively precludes major revisionist efforts. Furthermore, the
diffusion of small arms and the near universality of nationalism have
severely limited the ability of great powers to conquer and occupy territory
forces. Indeed, contrary to what the revivalists describe,

inhabited by resisting populations (as Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now Iraq have demonstrated). Unlike during the days

states today cannot translate great asymmetries of

power into effective territorial control; at most, they can hope for loose hegemonic relationships that
require them to give something in return. Also unlike in the nineteenth century, today the density of trade ,
investment , and production networks across international borders raises
even more the costs of war. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, to take one of the
most plausible cases of a future interstate war, would pose for the Chinese
communist regime daunting economic costs, both domestic and international.
Taken together, these changes in the economy of violence mean that the international
system is far more primed for peace than the autocratic revivalists acknowledge.
of empire building in the nineteenth century,

Nuke war doesnt cause extinction

Seitz 11 (Russell, served as an Associate of The Center for International Affairs
and a Fellow of the Department of Physics at Harvard. He is presently chief scientist
at Microbubbles LLC, Nuclear winter was and is debatable, Nature, 7 J U LY 2011, vol
475)
Alan Robocks contention that there has been no real scientific debate about the nuclear winter concept is itself
debatable (Nature 473, 275276; 2011). This potential climate disaster, popularized in Science in 1983, rested on the
output of a one- dimensional model that was later shown to overestimate the smoke a
nuclear holocaust might engender. More refined estimates, combined with advanced threedimensional models (see go.nature.com/ kss8te), have dramatically reduced the extent and

severity of the projected cooling. Despite this, Carl Sagan, who co-authored the 1983 Science
paper, went so far as to posit the extinction of Homo sapiens (C. Sagan Foreign Affairs 63,75-77;
1984). Some regarded this apocalyptic prediction as an exercise in mythology. George
Rathjens of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology protested: Nuclear winter is
the worst example of the misrepresentation of science to the public in my memory ,
(see go.nature.com/yujz84) and climatologist Kerry Emanuel observed that the subject had
become notorious for its lack of scientific integrity (Nature 319, 259; 1986). Robocks singledigit fall in temperature is at odds with the subzero (about -25C) continental cooling
originally projected for a wide spectrum of nuclear wars. Whereas Sagan predicted
darkness at noon from a US-Soviet nuclear conflict, Robock projects global sunlight
that is several orders of magnitude brighter for a Pakistan-India conflict literally
the difference between night and day. Since 1983, the projected worst-case cooling
has fallen from a Siberian deep freeze spanning 11,000 degree- days Celsius (a
measure of the severity of winters) to numbers so unseasonably small as to call the
very term nuclear winter into question.

---Case---

No War

No GPW Extension
United States nuclear primacy solves all conflict- superior
capabilities to both Russia and China are only increasing
Engdahl 14 (William Engdahl is an award-winning geopolitical analyst and

strategic risk consultant whose internationally best-selling books have been

translated into thirteen foreign languages, US missile shield: Russian Bear sleeping
with one eye open, http://rt.com/op-edge/us-missile-shield-russia-361/, February
17, 2014)

US nuclear primacy

In a 2006 interview with Londons Financial Times, then US Ambassador to NATO, former Cheney advisor

Victoria Nuland the same person today disgraced by a video of her phone discussion with US Ukraine Ambassador Pyatt on changing the Kiev
government (Fuck the EU) declared that the US wanted a globally deployable military force that would operate everywhere from Africa to the
Middle East and beyondall across our planet. Nuland then declared that it would include Japan and Australia as well as the NATO nations. She added,
Its a totally different animal. She was referring to BMD plans of Rumsfelds Pentagon.

As nuclear strategy experts warned

at that time, more than eight years ago, deployment of even a minimal

missile defense , under the Pentagons then-new CONPLAN 8022, would give the
US what the military called, Escalation Dominance the ability to win a war

at any level of violence, including nuclear war.

As the authors of a seminal Foreign Affairs article

back in April 2006 noted: Washington's continued refusal to eschew a first strike and the country's development of a limited missile-defense capability
take on a new, and possibly more menacing, look A nuclear war-fighting capability remains a key component of the United States' military doctrine and
nuclear primacy remains a goal of the United States. The two authors of the Foreign Affairs piece, Lieber and Press, went on to outline the real

. .[T]he sort of missile defenses

that the United States might plausibly deploy would be valuable primarily in an
offensive context, not a defensive oneas an adjunct to a US First Strike capability,
not as a stand-alone shield. If the United States launched a nuclear attack against
Russia (or China), the targeted country would be left with only a tiny
consequences of the current escalation of BMD in Europe (and as well against China in Japan): .

surviving arsenal if any at all. At that point, even a relatively modest or

inefficient missile defense system might well be enough to protect against any
retaliatory strikes. They concluded, Today , for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States

stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon

be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of
Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of
power stems from a series of improvements in the U nited S tates' nuclear

systems, the precipitous decline of Russia's arsenal, and the glacial

pace of modernization of China's nuclear forces.

Counter-forcing solves escalation of wars

Mueller 9 (Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies and Professor of
Political Science at Ohio State University (John, Atomic Obsession: Nuclear
Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda p. 8, Google Books)

To begin to approach a condition that can credibly justify applying such extreme characterizations as societal annihilation, a full-out

Even in such extreme cases,

the area actually devastated by the bombs' blast and thermal pulse effective would be limited: 2,000
1-MT explosions with a destructive radius of 5 miles each would directly demolish less than 5 percent of
the territory of the United States, for example. Obviously, if major population centers were targeted, this sort of
attack with hundreds, probably thousands, of thermonuclear bombs would be required.

attack could inflict massive casualties. Back in cold war days, when such devastating events sometimes seemed uncomfortably
likely, a number of

studies were conducted to estimate the consequences of massive

thermonuclear attacks. One of the most prominent of these considered several probabilities. The most likely
scenario--one that could be perhaps considered at least to begin to approach the rational--was a "counterforce"
strike in which well over 1,000 thermonuclear weapons would be targeted at America's ballistic missile
silos, strategic airfields, and nuclear submarine bases in an effort to destroy the countrys strategic
ability to retaliate. Since the attack would not directly target population centers, most
of the ensuing deaths would be from radioactive fallout, and the study estimates that from 2 to 20 million,
depending mostly on wind, weather, and sheltering, would perish during the first month.15

No miscalc or escalation or lose nukesevery crisis ever

disproves and neither side would escilate
Quinlan 9 (Michael, Former Permanent Under-Sec. State UK Ministry of
Defense, Thinking about Nuclear Weapons: Principles, Problems, Prospects, p. 6369) *we dont endorse gendered language
Even if initial nuclear use did not quickly end the fighting, the supposition of inexorable
momentum in a developing exchange, with each side rushing to overreaction amid confusion and
uncertainty, is implausible. It fails to consider what the situation of the decisionmakers would really be.
Neither side could want escalation. Both would be appalled at what was going on.
Both would be desperately looking for signs that the other was ready to call a halt. Both,
given the capacity for evasion or concealment which modem delivery platforms and vehicles can
possess, could have in reserve significant forces invulnerable enough not to entail useor-lose pressures. (It may be more open to question, as noted earlier, whether newer nuclear-weapon possessors can be
immediately in that position; but it is within reach of any substantial state with advanced technological capabilities, and attaining it

neither side can have any

predisposition to suppose, in an ambiguous situation of fearful risk, that the right course when in doubt is
to go on copiously launching weapons. And none of this analysis rests on any
is certain to be a high priority in the development of forces.) As a result,

presumption of highly subtle or pre-concerted

rationality . The rationality required is plain. The argument is reinforced if

Any substantial nuclear armoury

can inflict destruction outweighing any possible prize that aggression could hope to seize. A state
attacking the possessor of such an armoury must therefore be doing so (once given that it cannot
count upon destroying the armoury pre-emptively) on a judgement that the possessor would be found
lacking in the will to use it. If the attacked possessor used nuclear weapons, whether first or in
response to the aggressor's own first use, this judgement would begin to look dangerously precarious. There
must be at least a substantial possibility of the aggressor leaders' concluding that their
initial judgement had been mistakenthat the risks were after all greater than whatever prize they had been
seeking, and that for their own country's survival they must call off the aggression . Deterrence planning such
we consider the possible reasoning of an aggressor at a more dispassionate level.

as that of NATO was directed in the first place to preventing the initial misjudgement and in the second, if it were nevertheless
made, to compelling such a reappraisal. The former aim had to have primacy, because it could not be taken for granted that the
latter was certain to work. But there was no ground for assuming in advance, for all possible scenarios, that the chance of its

An aggressor state would itself be at huge risk if nuclear war

developed, as its leaders would know . It may be argued that a policy which abandons hope of physically
working must be negligible.

defeating the enemy and simply hopes to get him to desist is pure gamble, a matter of who blinks first; and that the political and
moral nature of most likely aggressors, almost ex hypothesi, makes them the less likely to blink. One response to this is to ask what
is the alternativeit can only be surrender. But a more positive and hopeful answer lies in the fact that the criticism is posed in a
political vacuum. Real-life conflict would have a political context. The context which concerned NATO during the cold war, for
example, was one of defending vital interests against a postulated aggressor whose own vital interests would not be engaged, or
would be less engaged. Certainty is not possible, but a clear asymmetry of vital interest is a legitimate basis for expecting an
asymmetry, credible to both sides, of resolve in conflict. That places upon statesmen, as page 23 has noted, the key task in
deterrence of building up in advance a clear and shared grasp of where limits lie. That was plainly achieved in cold-war Europe. If
vital interests have been defined in a way that is dear, and also clearly not overlapping or incompatible with those of the adversary,
a credible basis has been laid for the likelihood of greater resolve in resistance. It was also sometimes suggested by critics that
whatever might be indicated by theoretical discussion of political will and interests, the military environment of nuclear warfare
particularly difficulties of communication and controlwould drive escalation with overwhelming probability to the limit. But it is
obscure why matters should be regarded as inevitably .so for every possible level and setting of action. Even if the history of war
suggested (as it scarcely does) that military decision-makers are mostly apt to work on the principle 'When in doubt, lash out', the
nuclear revolution creates an utterly new situation. The pervasive reality, always plain to both sides during the cold war, is `If this

Given that inexorable escalation would mean catastrophe

for both, it would be perverse to suppose them permanently incapable of framing
arrangements which avoid it. As page 16 has noted, NATO gave its military commanders no widespread delegated
authority, in peace or war, to launch nuclear weapons without specific political direction. Many types of weapon
moreover had physical safeguards such as PALs incorporated to reinforce organizational
ones. There were multiple communication and control systems for passing
information, orders, and prohibitions. Such systems could not be totally guaranteed against disruption if at a
goes on to the end, we are all ruined'.

fairly intense level of strategic exchangewhich was only one of many possible levels of conflict an adversary judged it to be in

it
remained possible to operate on a general fail-safe presumption: no authorization,
no use. That was the basis on which NATO operated. If it is feared that the arrangements which 1 a nuclear-weapon possessor
his interest to weaken political control. It was far from clear why he necessarily should so judge. Even then, however,

has in place do not meet such standards in some respects, the logical course is to continue to improve them rather than to assume
escalation to be certain and uncontrollable, with all the enormous inferences that would have to flow from such an assumption.

The likelihood of escalation can never be 100 per cent , and never zero. Where between
those two extremes it may lie can never be precisely calculable in advance; and even were it so
calculable, it would not be uniquely fixedit would stand to vary hugely with circumstances. That there should be any
risk at all of escalation to widespread nuclear war must be deeply disturbing, and decision-makers would always have to weigh it
most anxiously. But a pair of key truths about it need to be recognized. The first is that the risk of escalation to large-scale nuclear
war is inescapably present in any significant armed conflict between nuclear-capable powers, whoever may have started the conflict
and whoever may first have used any particular category of weapon. The initiator of the conflict will always have physically available
to him options for applying more force if he meets effective resistance. If the risk of escalation, whatever its degree of probability, is
to be regarded as absolutely unacceptable, the necessary inference is that a state attacked by a substantial nuclear power must
forgo military resistance. It must surrender, even if it has a nuclear armoury of its own. But the companion truth is that, as page 47
has noted, the risk of escalation is an inescapable burden also upon the aggressor. The exploitation of that burden is the crucial
route, if conflict does break out, for managing it, to a tolerable outcome--the only route, indeed, intermediate between surrender
and holocaust, and so the necessary basis for deterrence beforehand. The working out of plans to exploit escalation risk most
effectively in deterring potential aggression entails further and complex issues. It is for example plainly desirable, wherever
geography, politics, and available resources so permit without triggering arms races, to make provisions and dispositions that are
likely to place the onus of making the bigger, and more evidently dangerous steps in escalation upon the aggressor volib wishes to
maintain his attack, rather than upon the defender. (The customary shorthand for this desirable posture used to be 'escalation
dominance'.) These issues are not further discussed here. But addressing them needs to start from acknowledgement that there are
in any event no certainties or absolutes available, no options guaranteed to be risk-free and cost-free. Deterrence is not possible
without escalation risk; and its presence can point to no automatic policy conclusion save for those who espouse outright pacifism

Ensuring the safety and security of nuclear

weapons plainly needs to be taken most seriously. Detailed information is understandably not
published, but such direct evidence as there is suggests that it always has been so taken in
every possessor state, with the inevitable occasional failures to follow strict
procedures dealt with rigorously. Critics have nevertheless from time to time argued that the possibility of
and accept its consequences. Accident and Miscalculation

accident involving nuclear weapons is so substantial that it must weigh heavily in the entire evaluation of whether war-prevention
structures entailing their existence should be tolerated at all. Two sorts of scenario are usually in question. The first is that of a
single grave event involving an unintended nuclear explosiona technical disaster at a storage site, for example, Dr the accidental
or unauthorized launch of a delivery system with a live nuclear warhead. The second is that of some eventperhaps such an
explosion or launch, or some other mishap such as malfunction or misinterpretation of radar signals or computer systemsinitiating
a sequence of response and counter-response that culminated in a nuclear exchange which no one had truly intended. No event that
is physically possible can be said to be of absolutely zero probability (just as at an opposite extreme it is absurd to claim, as has
been heard from distinguished figures, that nuclear-weapon use can be guaranteed to happen within some finite future span despite
not having happened for over sixty years). But human affairs cannot be managed to the standard of either zero or total probability.
We have to assess levels between those theoretical limits and weigh their reality and implications against other factors, in security

There have certainly been, across the decades since 1945, many known
accidents involving nuclear weapons , from transporters skidding off roads to bomber aircraft crashing with or
accidentally dropping the weapons they carried (in past days when such carriage was a frequent
feature of readiness arrangements----it no longer is) . A few of these accidents may have released into
the nearby environment highly toxic material. None however has entailed a nuclear detonation. Some
planning as in everyday life.

commentators suggest that this reflects bizarrely good fortune amid such massive activity and deployment over so many years. A

the probability of any

accident triggering a nuclear explosion is extremely low. It might be further noted that the
mechanisms needed to set off such an explosion are technically demanding, and that
in a large number of ways the past sixty years have seen extensive improvements in safety
arrangements for both the design and the handling of weapons . It is undoubtedly possible to see
more rational deduction from the facts of this long experience would however be that

respects in which, after the cold war, some of the factors bearing upon risk may be new or more adverse; but some are now plainly
less so.

The years which the world has come through entirely without accidental or unauthorized

detonation

have included early decades in which knowledge was

sketchier, precautions were less developed, and weapon designs

were less ultra-safe

as well as substantial periods in which

weapon numbers were larger, deployments more widespread and diverse,
movements more frequent, and several aspects of doctrine and readiness
arrangements more tense. Similar considerations apply to the hypothesis of nuclear war being mistakenly triggered
than they later became,

by false alarm. Critics again point to the fact, as it is understood, of numerous occasions when initial steps in alert sequences for US

In none of these
instances, it is accepted, did matters get at all near to nuclear launch-- extraordinary good
fortune again, critics have suggested. But the rival and more logical inference from hundreds of
events stretching over sixty years of experience presents itself once more: that the
probability of initial misinterpretation leading far towards mistaken launch is
remote. Precisely because any nuclear-weapon possessor recognizes the vast gravity of
any launch, release sequences have many steps, and human decision is repeatedly
interposed as well as capping the sequences . To convey that because a first step was prompted the world
nuclear forces were embarked upon, or at least called for, by, indicators mistaken or misconstrued.

somehow came close to accidental nuclear war is wild hyperbole, rather like asserting, when a tennis champion has lost his opening

History anyway scarcely offers any ready example of

major war started by accident even before the nuclear revolution imposed an
order-of-magnitude increase in caution. It was occasionally conjectured that nuclear war might be triggered
service game, that he was nearly beaten in straight sets.

by the real but accidental or unauthorized launch of a strategic nuclear-weapon delivery system in the direction of a potential

No such launch is known to have occurred in over sixty years . The

probability of it is therefore very low. But even if it did happen, the further hypothesis of it initiating
a general nuclear exchange is far-fetched. It fails to consider the real situation of
decision-makers as pages 63-4 have brought out . The notion that cosmic holocaust might be mistakenly
adversary.

precipitated in this way belongs to science fiction.

Nuke War Extinction

Nuclear Winter theory is based on flawed data
Ball 6 Professor at the Strategic and Defense Studies Centre at the Australian
National University, former Head of the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, former
Co-chairman of the Steering Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in
Asia-Pacific [Desmond, May, The Probabilities of On the Beach: Assessing
Armageddon Scenarios in the 21st Century,
http://rspas.anu.edu.au/papers/sdsc/wp/wp_sdsc_401.pdf]
In the early 1980s, various scientists and scientific organisations questioned the simplicity of these calculations, and
especially their neglect of longer-term ecological and environmental consequences. Atmospheric physicists and
biologists/ecologists demonstrated that the sudden injection of a couple of hundred million tonnes of smoke, soot and other
particulate matter into the upper atmosphere would have catastrophic environmental consequences, characterised as
Nuclear Winter. They argued that an all-out exchange would involve expenditure of 5,000 to 10,000 megatons. The most
widely cited baseline scenario involved some 14,750 warheads with a total of 5,750 megatons, with almost every city in the
world with a population of three million or more being attacked with fifteen warheads totalling ten megatons and those with
populations of 1-3 million each being allocated three 1 megaton weapons. A baseline counter-force scenario allocated 4,000
megatons to strategic counterforce targets, which ignited wildfires over 500,000 square kilometres of forest, brush and
grasslands, consuming some 0.5 grams per square centimetre of fuel in the process and producing some 76.5 million tonnes
of smoke. This was said to follow statistically from the fact that approximately 50 percent of the land areas in
the countries likely

to be involved in a nuclear exchange are covered by forest

or brush,

which are flammable about 50 percent of the time . 6 The leading populariser of the Nuclear Winter
hypothesis was Carl Sagan, the brilliant planetary scientist and humanist. He had noticed in 1971, when Mariner 1 was
examining Mars, that the planet was subject to global dust storms which markedly affected the atmospheric and surface
temperatures. Large amounts of dust in the upper atmosphere absorbed sunlight, heating the atmosphere but cooling the
surface, spreading cold and darkness over the planet. He recognised that wholesale ground-bursts of nuclear weapons and
the incineration of hundreds of cities could produce sufficient dust and smoke to cause a similar effect on the Earth. Sagan

postulated the existence of some threshold level around 100 million

tonnes of smokefor production of Nuclear Winter . 7 I argued vigorously with Sagan about the
even

Nuclear Winter hypothesis, both in lengthy correspondence and, in August-September 1985, when I was a guest in the
lovely house he and Ann Druyan had overlooking Ithaca in up-state New York. I argued that, with more realistic

data about the operational characteristics of the respective US and Soviet force configurations (such
as bomber delivery profiles, impact footprints of MIRVed warheads) and more plausible exchange scenarios, it was
impossible to generate anywhere near the postulated levels of smoke . The
megatonnage expended on cities (economic/industrial targets) was more likely to be around 140-650 than over 1,000; the
amount of smoke generated would have ranged from around 18 million tonnes to perhaps 80 million tonnes. In the case of
counter-force scenarios, most missile forces were (and still are) located in either ploughed fields or tundra and, even where
they are generally located in forested or grassed areas, very few of the actual missile silos are less than several kilometres
from combustible material. A target-by-target analysis of the actual locations of the

strategic nuclear forces in the United States and the Soviet Union showed that
the actual amount of smoke produced even by a 4,000 megaton counter-force
scenario would range from only 300 tonnes (if the exchange occurred in January) to 2,000
tonnes (for an exchange in July)the worst case being a factor of 40 smaller
than that postulated by the Nuclear Winter theorist s. I thought that it was just as wrong to
overestimate the possible consequences of nuclear war, and to raise the spectre of extermination of human life as a serious
likelihood, as to underestimate them (e.g., by omitting fallout casualties).

Small Farms

ADT = NAIS
The USDA compared ADT to NAIS
McGeary, et al 12 (Judiath- Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, Email to the
office of management and budget detailing the objections to ADT- over 10 different
organizations signed on in support, June 6, Re: USDA-APHIS Animal Disease
Traceability Final Rule RIN: 0579-AD24, http://www.r-calfusa.com/wpcontent/uploads/animal_id/120606-OMB-Letter-updated.pdf
IV. USDA failed to consider alternatives to its ADT proposal In considering alternatives to the
proposed rule, the agency did not consider the alternative that was proposed by many cattle organizations to
identify only the breeding herd and not phasing in feeder cattle. Nor did the agency consider the alternative of not

the agency compared the proposed

rule only to its failed proposal for the National Animal Identification System (NAIS).
imposing new regulatory burdens on poultry owners. Instead,

NAIS, which was withdrawn by the USDA in February 2010 after widespread, vocal opposition from tens of
thousands of people, would have required that every single person who owned even one livestock or poultry animal
register their property in a government database, identify each animal (in many cases with electronic forms of
identification), and report a long list of events to a database within 24 hours.

The NAIS was an

absurdly expensive and unnecessary program , and using it as the baseline against which
to compare the ADT rule was inappropriate and inconsistent with the reasons behind requiring regulatory impact
analyses.

NAIS Bad-disease
NAIS increases disease risks through faulty monitoring
Smith Thomas No Date (Heather Smith Thomas- author of 20 books and
thousands of articles on animal health care, The NAIS Controversy
Part I, http://www.dairygoatjournal.com/84-6/heather_smith_thomas/ )

By now most people who own farm animals have heard about the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) plan
thats being pushed by USDA, but many of us are still finding out how this might affect us-with premises
registration, individual animal ID and tracking requirements. In spite of the fact

USDA has no legal

authority to force this system on us, the agency has pushed forward with plans to have it mandatory

by 2009. As of March 2006, 235,000 premises (10 percent of national total) had been registered and USDA
predicted that 475,000 of our two million premises will be registered by the end of 2006. USDA says much of the
NAIS is now operational and that remaining elements soon will be. Plans are for having all databases operational by
early 2007, and 100 percent of all premises registered (and all nine billion target animals given ID) by January 2009.
USDA has a contingency plan to make this "voluntary" program mandatory "if participation rates are not adequate."
Secretary Johanns says this has been high priority with USDA; "weve made significant strides toward achieving a
comprehensive U.S. system. We recognize that this represents one of the largest systematic changes ever faced by
the livestock industry and we have welcomed suggestions from stakeholders to ensure that we continue to gain
momentum." Yet some of the stakeholders have never had the chance for input and are just now learning about

A huge number of animal owners who will be greatly

affected by the NAIS plan were never informed about what was happening, since the
USDA only discussed the plan with large producer groups and ignored small, independent farmers.
drastic changes this system will entail.

USDA claimed that "listening sessions" held by APHIS (June through November, 2004) produced 59 out of 60
comments in support of the NAIS. This was a distortion-since these were closed meetings; the people who attended
them were carefully chosen. By contrast, after USDA announced the program publicly in July 2005, a listening
session in Texas drew more than 700 comments, a majority of which were opposed to the program. How did the
NAIS evolve? This ambitious project was spawned by the NIAA (National Institute for Animal Agriculture), a selfappointed group made up of many organizations involved in animal agriculture, including some of the largest
corporations (such as Monsanto, Cargill Meat, National Pork Producers) and many manufacturers of high-tech
animal equipment (Allflex, Digital Angel, Global Vet Link, Micro Beef Technologies, etc.). Some of them have a
vested interest in a national animal ID program because it will ensure more markets and higher prices for their
meat or for ID equipment. The NIAA brings together interested parties from government and industry to discuss
issues in animal agriculture and to create action plans. Neil Hammerschmidt, Coordinator for the NAIS at USDA
(APHIS), helped develop an international program before he took charge of the U.S. ID program. During 1998-2003
(just prior to his present position) he chaired the ID and Information committee of the NIAA and was involved in the
International Committee on Animal Recording and the ISO (International Standards Organization) Working Group for
International Standards for Electronic Identification of Animals. Some of the big players in the livestock/meat
packing industry want a strong foreign market for their beef and a lions share of the domestic market. The
international trade market is part of what is driving the NAIS plan. In 2003 our beef exports brought $7.5 billion.
This market crashed after the first cow with BSE was discovered in the U.S. (a cow that came originally from a
Canadian herd); in 2005 beef exports were down to $1.22 billion because some countries refused to buy our beef.
So packers and their trade associates want to restore and enhance the export market. They want traceability of
animals (since many foreign markets demand it). Some of the largest domestic markets for beef are also
demanding traceability. McDonalds claims traceability for 10 percent of their meat and wants 100 percent; Wal-Mart
demands 100 percent. These demands put pressure on meat processors who then want producers to provide

Why not keep it voluntary? Systems already in place for

tracking animal diseases and movements in this country have worked . Brand laws,
health certificates, control programs for brucellosis, TB, scrapie, etc. have done a
good job. We havent had a case of foot and mouth disease in the U.S. since 1929. BSE is a non-contagious
traceable (tagged) products.

disease caused by cattle eating feed containing body parts of cattle with BSE. The sale of feed supplements
containing rendered animal parts was banned in the U.S. in 1997. The only way we can get it is by importing

The best defense against foreign animal diseases is

monitoring of imported animals and meat-not by making every U.S. owner ID their
livestock. If some people want to export animals or meat they could voluntarily participate in value-added
programs. A national ID program should be voluntary or limited to animals most likely
to be included in international commerce-without government imposing an intrusive
system on every premises that has a farm animal. The new USDA Undersecretary for Marketing
animals (and meat) from other countries.

and Regulatory Programs (which include APHIS, which puts him in charge of the NAIS), Bruce Knight, stated at the
hearing for his nomination that he thought the program should be kept voluntary. But this may be a ploy to pacify
the growing opposition to the program. In June 2006 USDA put out a "Guide for Small Scale or Non-commercial

Producers" which implies that the program is completely voluntary and has no penalties or enforcement provisions.
But when pressed for comment in a news conference, USDA Secretary Johanns made it very clear that if voluntary
participation was not 100 percent, he had the authority to make the program mandatory. Indeed, if USDA had no
thought of making it mandatory and didnt really care whether people participated or not, why would they be
spending so much money and pushing so hard to implement it? Shortcomings of the RFID system

The NAIS

dictates that every farm animal (other than those in large commercial groups like pigs and chickens that
stay together from birth to slaughter and have one group number) must have an individual ID number.
These can be ear tags or implanted microchips. The NAIS stipulates use of the ISO (International Standards
Organization) 134.2 kHz (kilohertz) frequency chips-the type used in many European countries. There are several
kinds of microchips, however. In the U.S., horse owners, pet owners and other animal owners have been using an
American chip system (125 kHz) to provide secure ID for registered animals, to help prevent theft, locate missing
animals, etc. For pets and horses, for instance, there are private tracking systems that work together and have
been in place for 15 years. After Hurricane Katrina, 364 horses were gathered up and all but one returned to their
owners because they had microchips. Most horses in Louisiana have microchips already (in conjunction with the
states Coggins testing program to eliminate Equine Infectious Anemia), but these are the 125 kHz chips. A private
database network gives horse and pet owners immediate assistance when an animal is missing or stolen. There are
scanners for these chips in nearly every law enforcement office, animal shelter, etc. across the country. The ISO
scanners, however, cant detect these chips. The USDA is hurrying to put their ISO type scanners into the field to
accommodate the type of chip they want us all to use, but it will take awhile to get enough out there, and unless
the new scanners are dual readers, any 125 kHz chips wont be detected. Yet dual readers are not reliable because
they dont "read" each chip at the same speed.

The two systems are not effectively cross

compatible. Scanners designed to read both frequencies are not efficient nor reliable because only one
frequency can be prioritized within the scanner. This leaves the other in second place and
vulnerable to being missed.

In a recent study by Proctor and Gamble, a scanner designed to read

only the 125 kHz chip produced 100 percent read efficiency, while a scanner designed to read both frequencies
missed 50 percent of the chips. In any ID program, it is essential that scanners read microchips quickly and
accurately. Scanners operate at top efficiency (and are most reliable) when built to read one frequency, not several.

One reason the U.S. system has worked so well is because we have just one
frequency and all scanners read all the chips that operate at that frequency . The 125
kHz system is an American system thats been in use for more than 15 years. Many countries (including most of
South America) have never used the ISO system the USDA wants us to use, because the latter is an open system
and easily compromised. It was originally developed in Russia and Europe to identify tractor parts and commodities
for the international European market. A scanner in Germany or France, for instance, could "read" a chip on an
Italian part and know what it was. The 134.2 kHz chip has a 15 digit number, the first three digits being a country

Because the ISO system is open (in the public domain, with published standards any chip
manufacturer can follow) there is no legal way to stop production of unsanctioned
code.

chips. The problem with using this type of chip for disease trace-back, bio-security
or unique ID for ownership proof, breed registry number or theft and fraud
prevention is there is no guarantee of uniqueness of ID codes . There are several
ways the ID codes can be counterfeited in an open standard. Chips can be ordered factory programmed with
desired numbers, and some manufacturers are selling reprogrammable chips indistinguishable from factoryprogrammed chips. Some chips can be reprogrammed as many times as you want, even after theyre in an animal
or an ear tag. An implanted chips number can be read by a small hand-held device that can then be used to put
that number on another chip in a different animal. Duplicate numbers werent a problem in the original setting for
which the ISO system was developed (commodities-to make sure certain types of paper products made by different
companies would fit your printer, for instance), but they are a problem for animal ID. Because ear tags in livestock
are often lost, the ISO group in 2001 decided to allow for retagging animals with a new tag carrying the same chip
number as the lost one, and allowed for blank chips that can be programmed. Then reprogrammable chips were
allowed. In a May, 2001 ISO document describing their criteria for replacing lost animal chips, they stated it would
be disastrous if these blank chips fell into the wrong hands. Instead of trying to preserve the integrity of the system

An open
system wont work for a national database for disease control or for valuable
animals that need unique ID to prevent theft or animal-switching. A look-alike could
pose for a more valuable animal. An animal from another country could appear to be
one from the U.S. or vice versa. USDA is not being realistic in thinking we can use
this system for dependable animal trace-back to farm of origin, or to thwart bioterrorism. A published open standard for something thats supposed to provide unique or secure ID wont work.
they essentially said "you can duplicate and reprogram these tags", but "we are not responsible."

According to Barbara Masin, the U.S. member of the ISO board, "This would be like our government publishing the

standard for dollar bills, telling people exactly what paper to use, what color ink, etc. so anyone could do it!" This is
not a good system upon which to base a national animal ID program! USDA and others who are pushing for the ISO
134.2 kHz chip required by the NAIS tell us this is an international standard and our country must comply. But

This "standard" was created

as the result of political compromise and has many flaws regarding performance
and technical feasibility. More than 60 countries besides the U.S. have not adopted this system and many
theyre not telling us this standard is flawed and many countries dont use it.

of the countries using it are not happy with it and have asked that the standard be repealed. There were so many
complaints last year that the matter was put to a vote, and 50 percent of the voting nations in the ISO group voted
to have the standard repealed or revised. Thus it is not the universally accepted technology that some people claim
it to be. There are suspicions that this system was chosen mainly because of the market advantage it will give
certain players who helped create the NAIS. People who are aware of the problems with the ISO system wonder why
USDA is dictating the use of this particular chip. Barbara Masin, who sits on the ISO board, says it is not suitable,
and "when this was being discussed for livestock, our ISO board approached the USDA and attempted to
communicate with everyone from Anne Venneman (Secretary of Agriculture at that time) on down, and they did not
return our calls. I went to the USDA listening sessions and offered to show them the problem with duplication
possibilities, but they didnt want to see it. The situation is very political. There are certain people involved within
the USDA who have very close ties to certain manufacturers. There is an underlying agenda, unfortunately," says
Masin. The flaws in this system have been well documented as far back as 1995, she
says. "Its unfortunate that when the discussion at USDA was happening for the livestock standard, it wasnt an
open discussion." Listening sessions were "closed" with crowd control supervision. "USDA did not want to see any
information against the system, and did not respond to efforts to show them what was going on in other countries,"
says Masin. USDA continues to push on with their agenda , telling stockmen to use these tags with
this RIFD frequency, but they dont have enough "read range" to be practical. Scanners must be practically at
touching distance. Cattle, sheep and goats must be restrained (in a chute, or held) to get close enough for accurate
scanning. In field tests, a high percentage of tags or implanted chips cant be detected when animals come off a
truck or go through a sale ring. One sale yard reported "read rates" as low as 47 percent for feeder pigs and 66
percent for sheep. Environmental factors (weather, lighting in a sale barn, type of fencing, electromagnetic
interference from motors used in the auction yard) can interfere with the scanners in sale barns; they cant pick up
the low frequency chips. Sale barn owners worry that they cant afford the equipment and also wonder if the
complications of the ID system will lead more stockmen to sell directly to feedlots or packers; it all adds up to more
small markets going out of business. Equity Livestock (an outfit with 13 sale barns in Iowa and Wisconsin) recently
spent $70,000 for scanners, software and extra labor to test electronic ID at one of their yards, but feels this cost
would be hard to justify in smaller operations.

AT: Increases Disease

Traceability eliminates proven methods in favor of one that
increases risk of disease
Lewis 12 (Patrice- Backwoods Home Magazine contributor, Issue 137 Sep/Oct

2012, Animal disease traceability,

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/lewis137.html)
FARFA lodged its opposition to ADT on many points: First, ADT's costs significantly outweigh its
benefits. The USDA has failed to provide scientific support justifying these new regulations. Traceability is
an unproven approach, particularly in light of the success of tuberculosis and
brucellosis vaccination programs. When FARFA submitted a very specific list
requesting solid facts and data to support the need for Animal Disease Traceability,
the majority of the questions remained unanswered (which sounds either like a case of "We
really don't have the answers for that" or maybe even "If we ignore them they'll go away"). Second, FARFA
maintains that the agency's Regulatory Impact Analysis is significantly flawed and
fails to properly address the costs of the proposed rules. It's an understatement that
government agencies routinely and severely underestimate the costs and impact on those who are regulated. ADT

the
infrastructure and labor necessary to place tags on livestock is not as simple as it
sounds. Range cattle are large, ornery, and generally not in the mood to be subdued in a chute and tagged.
Indirect costs associated with this ruling may include the purchasing or construction
of chutes, hiring additional labor, legal requirements to sale barns and
veterinarians, vet charges and farm calls, and even increased insurance
requirements for labor. This doesn't even address the cost to the taxpayers for
hiring personnel to manage an enormous computerized database of information.
The vast bulk of the cost associated with compliance will not fall on those who
benefit the most from implementation. The costs will be born by producers and
associated businesses (such as sale barns and veterinarians), but the benefits will be reaped
by exporters and digital chip manufacturers because, yes, the ear tags and leg
bands favored under the current version of ADT contain NAIS-style RFID chips. Third,
FARFA believes many aspects of livestock production should be exempt . For instance, feeder
cattle (cattle under 18 months of age) and poultry should be excluded to avoid harming
producers and sales barns and to avoid problems like the impossible burden of having to band,
re-band, and re-band birds and report each banding as their legs grow. Banding adult birds and
is no exception. The agency is "encouraging the use of lower-cost technology" such as electronic ear tags, but

obtaining Interstate Certificates of Veterinary Inspection (ICVIs) would likely cost more than the value of the bird.
Dairy cattle should be better defined and those in small operations should be exempted and rules concerning

Currently, the ADT could horse be interpreted

to mean that horse owners would have to get permission from every single state an
animal passes through on the way to a rodeo or show . FARFA also wants brands and tattoos
horses should be simplified and made more clear.

officially recognized forms of identification, subject to states' abilities to opt out. The proposed rule "downgrades
brands to an unofficial form of identification," notes Ms. McGeary. "Yet producers in brand states know that branding
is an extremely reliable method for identifying animals." And unlike ear tags, brands and tattoos are things an
animal can't lose. Additionally, removing brands and tattoos as official forms of identification could have
ramifications on the legal and practical status of the animal. Also, FARFA maintains that cattle moving directly to
slaughter should be identified with backtags, not ear tags. Backtags reduce stress on the animals, speed up
efficiency, reduce hazards to workers, and cost less. FARFA also suggested that the USDA reduce the record-keeping

The
proposed justification for the extra paperwork does not hold up under examination
in "real world" situations. Vets and livestock sale barns would be required to keep records on cattle for five
years, even though most of the cattle being documented will have already been consumed long before. This
would create mountains of useless paperwork. Costs to producers for veterinary
services are likely to rise as well, since vets will need to pass the additional costs of regulatory
requirements to avoid imposing undue burdens on producers, veterinarians, state officials, and sale barns.

paperwork on to the producers. And vets who specialize in large-animal care are already in short supply. (Trust me

Livestock owners who duck under the radar

and refuse to tag their animals are far less likely to seek veterinary care when they
encounter a health problem, because vets may be required to report them for
noncompliance. The livestock owners could be subject to unspecified penalties. Clearly this is
on this.) Additionally, keep in mind one critical factor:

counterproductive if the USDA's intent is to control disease . FARFA also

wants standards for using more than one form of official identification to be
consistent and reasonable. Currently the proposed rule would prohibit prohibit!
multiple official identification devices or methods on the same animal (with certain

exceptions). Personally, I find this extraordinary; and it demonstrates that those making the ruling are unfamiliar
with the hands-on realities of livestock. The proposed ruling gives preference to electronic ear tags; but ear tags
can be lost on a regular basis (trust me on this). That's why additional identification such as brands and tattoos
should be recognized and maintained. FARFA identified many other problems. For instance, the proposed rule
defines livestock as "all farm-raised animals." Clearly this is vague and open to problems of interpretation. What
about livestock (such as chickens or goats) raised in urban environments? What about farm-raised dogs bred for
sale? Don't laugh; these are serious issues that require specific definitions. Finally, FARFA recommended that the
proposed rule not be adopted at all until performance standards and evaluations have been determined. " In

effect," notes FARFA, "the agency is asking producers to provide it with a 'blank
check,' signing on to a program when the consequences are unknown . That blank check
could be expensive. The agency has not accurately evaluated all of the direct and indirect costs of the
proposed rule to producers and sale barns, such as the costs in time and potential injuries to both people and

the costs to States remain unknown, an issue of deep concern at a

time when many State agencies are facing dramatic cuts to their budgets ." [image
animals. In addition,

omitted] Put on the brakes Bottom line, FARFA is urging the USDA to identify the specific diseases of concern and
analyze how to best address those diseases (including prevention measures) rather than continuing to push a one-

it's not the small

producers who are the problem children in the food supply chain. It's the huge
agribusinesses who deal with large numbers of animals in filthy disease-ridden
conditions that are of greater concern. If the export market would benefit from the proposed rule, as
size-fits-all tracking program with numerous built-in problems. And remember,

the agency claims, then the packing companies that export meat should pay the costs and offer economic

Rather than forcing

homesteaders and small farmers and ranchers into compliance with an untested
tracking system, the USDA would do better to improve preventative measures in
agribusiness facilities rather than after-the-fact tracking.
premiums to livestock producers to encourage them to participate in a voluntary system.

Exports

Traceability helps exports

Traceability huge for US beef competitiveness
Maday 15(John Maday- Editor Bovine Veterinarian magazine and Managing Editor
CattleNetwork, ADT update, http://www.cattlenetwork.com/news/industry/adtupdate ,March 27, 2015)
Shere also pointed out that APHIS is under pressure from other government agencies and
industry over the lack of a comprehensive farm-to-fork traceability system and its
impact on trade. Most of our competitors for international meat exports have such a
system, and use it as leverage against the United States in trade negotiations.
Some critical import markets, including China, cite our lack of traceability
in refusing imports of U.S. beef .

International trade falls outside the official goals of the ADT

Many in the
industry however, believe we need a more comprehensive traceability program to help
ensure future competitiveness in international markets . Shere says unnamed
independent beef supply chains have approached USDA with proposals for pilot
projects to demonstrate their birth-to-slaughter traceability systems, with the goal
of gaining access to the Chinese market for their branded beef .
program, which was designed to help minimize and contain potential disease outbreaks.

US exports displace local production

US meat exports stop local production
Clark and Hawkes 12 (Sarah E. Clark-former IATP intern and master's degree
candidate in international agriculture and trade policy at Tufts University. Dr Corinna
Hawkes-Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Food Policy, City University London.
Exporting Obesity, http://www.iatp.org/documents/exporting-obesity ,Published
April 5, 2012)
Theres little doubt that the industrialization of agriculture in the U.S. has increased calorie output tremendously.

federal investment in, and policies prioritizing certain agricultural research

and developmentin particular, focused on how to increase production, typically for corn, wheat and
livestock commodities. A second key component has been policies that set out, initially, to
protect farm income and, subsequently, policies that promoted commodity production, even
when production levels appear to have undercut farm income. In the mid-20th century, for
One key component was

example, U.S. agricultural policy included various mechanisms to manage the farm supply of commodities, in part
through limits on production and through price floors. These policies dampened volatility in both commodity

In the last quarter of the 20th century, public policy moved away
from supply management. Commodity firms and food processors pushed for these
changes, precisely because greater production would mean lower prices for these
commodities. Low prices, especially for corn and soybeans, in turn attracted livestock and dairy producers to
supplies and prices.

begin using these commodities as feed. Today, meat and dairy producers are the largest end-users of corn and
soybeans. Decreasing commodity prices also led to the proliferation of novel products derived from them, such as
high fructose syrup from corn, and hydrogenated vegetable oil from soybeans. These in turn served as inexpensive
ingredients in a plethora of processed foods, usually relatively dense in calories but low in nutritive value.

Commodity overproduction and depressed prices for commodities in the U.S. led the
government to seek new export markets for U.S. grains (and, more recently, U.S. meat).
However, the sale overseas of U.S. commodities at prices less than the cost of
domestic productioni.e., dumpinghas been tied to the loss of economic value
from agriculture in developing countries, resulting in hunger and depressed
production in rural communities abroad.

AT: Increases meat prices

Increasing the price decreases the consumption-Current meat
prices unsustainable--for environment and consumers
NewScientist 15 (The world pays too high a price for cheap meat,

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530052.900-the-world-pays-too-high-aprice-for-cheap-meat.html#.VWSjl8_BzRY ,22 January 2015)

NOT long ago, a meal centred on meat was a rare treat. No longer. Most of us in the West now eat meat
every day; many consume it at every meal. And people in less carnivorous cultures
are getting a taste for it, too: in China it has become aspirational . Worldwide

meat production has surged

from 78 million tonnes per year in 1963 to 308 million tonnes in

2014. The problem, setting aside issues around the morality of eating animals, is that

cannot support this growing appetite.

the planet

Pasture used to graze livestock already accounts for 26

the meat industry is responsible for 15 per cent of all

greenhouse gas emissions. There is a strong case that meat is now too cheap, its
price pushed down by ever more intensive farming practices . While that is ostensibly good
for consumers, it's bad for the environment in terms of pollution and antibiotic resistance, as well as
climate and very often bad for animals. And it can be bad for consumers if corners are cut to keep
prices low (16 February 2013, p 6). Is it possible to push the price back up? Governments
have succeeded in reducing the consumption of alcohol and tobacco by taxing
them. But a "sin tax" on meat lacks the clear case established for drinking and smoking: there is mixed evidence
per cent of the planet's ice-free landmass;

on potential links between high levels of meat consumption, cancer and heart disease. And it depends on exactly
what you eat (see "Let them eat steak: How to eat meat the healthy way"). A more viable option might be to pull
back on the agricultural subsidies that underpin meat production.

AT: Prices High Now

Negs evidence is a snapshot of a temporary spike-Aff
transforms long term consumption via changing the structure
of food production
Bittman 08 (Mark Bittman-writer New York Times, Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler
,http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?
pagewanted=2 ,January 27, 2008)
These problems originated here, but are no longer limited to the United States. While the
domestic demand for meat has leveled off, the industrial production of livestock is
growing more than twice as fast as land-based methods, according to the United Nations. Perhaps the

best hope for change lies in consumers becoming aware of the true costs of industrial meat production. When you
look at environmental problems in the U.S., says Professor Eshel, nearly all of them have their source in food
production and in particular meat production. And factory farming is optimal only as long as degrading waterways
is free.

If dumping this stuff becomes costly even if it simply carries

a non-zero price tag the entire structure of food production will

change dramatically. Animal welfare may not yet be a major concern, but as the horrors of raising
meat in confinement become known, more animal lovers may start to react. And would the world not be a better

Real
prices of beef, pork and poultry have held steady, perhaps even decreased , for 40
years or more (in part because of grain subsidies), though were beginning to see them
increase now. But many experts, including Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at
George Mason University, say they dont believe meat prices will rise high enough
to affect demand in the United States. I just dont think we can count on market
prices to reduce our meat consumption, he said. There may be a temporary
place were some of the grain we use to grow meat directed instead to feed our fellow human beings?

spike in food prices, but it will almost certainly be reversed and then some. But if
all the burden is put on eaters, thats not a tragic state of affairs .

Solvency

AT: ADT more efficient

ADT is inefficient and patchwork
Maday 15(John Maday- Editor Bovine Veterinarian magazine and Managing Editor
CattleNetwork, ADT update, http://www.cattlenetwork.com/news/industry/adtupdate ,March 27, 2015)
The federal Animal Disease Traceability (ADT) program is up and running, but challenges
including inconsistencies in state requirements and mixed messages regarding
program goals continue to slow progress toward true traceability. Those points were clear during the
recent National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA) conference in Indianapolis where the NIAA Animal
Identification and Information Systems Council received an update from USDA officials and others.

AT: USDA reforms/good

The USDA fails to regulate well due to favoring big ag over
small farms
Faillace 08 (Linda Faillace-author of Mad Sheep: The True Story Behind the

USDA's War on a Family Farm, Vermont Farm Leader, Linda Faillace, on Why the
USDA Will Not Allow US Beef Producer, Creekstone Farms, to Test Cows for Mad Cow
Disease, https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/vermont-farm-leader-lindafaillace-why-usda-will-not-allow-us-beef-producer-creekstone-farms ,September 26,
2008)
How much longer should we defer to a governmental agency that has consistently
failed to perform its duties? The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is charged
with protecting the American food supply, yet not a week goes by without another
food-related health scare seizing headlines across the nation: listeria in pasteurized milk;
spinach contaminated with E. coli; and potentially unsafe meat from "downer" cattle (animals which are sick or
injured and unable to stand). This past spring tomatoes and peppers were accused of causing 1,442 illnesses and

These outbreaks
are the results of decades of USDA policy decisions which favor corporations and
two deaths, yet the USDA is still unable to confirm the source of the salmonella infections.

industrial agriculture over small family farms and local production. Intensive
animal and crop operations can lead to sick animals and tainted vegetables entering the food chain, and regulations
which would prevent these incidents are often overlooked when corporate interests are at stake. A prime example is
the USDA's (mis) handling of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or "mad cow" disease. Europe has dealt with
BSE for more than twenty-one years and has an extensive surveillance program in place: just last year
approximately 9.7 million cattle were tested. While Europe tested millions, the USDA tested a few thousand and
arrogantly proclaimed the United States was free of BSE, until the first case was discovered in 2003. Export markets
dried up overnight. Japan and Korea, two of the largest importers of American beef, demanded the USDA either test
for BSE or halt beef sales. The United States refused and a trade war quickly ensued. To date, tens of thousands of
Koreans have taken to the streets to protest their government's acceptance of untested American beef.

Japanese and Korean top officials have been either severely criticized or
forced to resign for allowing imports of US beef into their countries. Creekstone Farms
Subsequently,

raises all natural, premium beef and had a very lucrative overseas market until the first case of BSE. Anxious to reestablish trade, Creekstone contacted the USDA to purchase BSE testing kits, but the USDA denied them access to
the kits and threatened fines and even imprisonment if Creekstone attempted to test their cattle. Creekstone Farms
filed a federal suit against the USDA, demanding the right to test. In 2007, a federal district court ruled in their
favor. The USDA quickly appealed-and won. In a decision last week, D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Karen LeCraft
Henderson overturned the district court's ruling and made repeated references to the fact that Congress gave the
USDA broad powers. "We owe USDA a considerable degree of deference in its interpretation of the term, bearing, as
it does, on USDA's charge to 'administer our federal meat and poultry inspection laws,'" she stated. But the USDA
does not deserve this deference. When the Humane Society released undercover footage of animal abuse and
downer cattle going into the human food supply while USDA officials were on site, Americans were outraged and
called for action. The USDA worked with the California-based company to organize the largest meat recall in history143 million pounds. What the American public was not told was that the recall was for all the meat the company
had produced over the previous two years, and the vast majority of it had already been consumed.

should be supporting the decentralization of the beef industry .

The USDA

USDA inspectors were

The best
suggestion is for the USDA to support smaller slaughterhouses instead of forcing
them out of business with burdensome regulations necessary for the industrial meat
processors. Our family farm, which produced high quality breeding stock and gourmet cheese, experienced the
already on site, so more inspections would not have made a difference, nor would more regulations.

USDA's ineptness and corruption first hand when they targeted our healthy flock of sheep for BSE, a disease which
does not exist in sheep. Our decade-long battle with the USDA and a subsequent lawsuit has revealed a laundry list
of documented misdeeds against us including: destruction of evidence, suppression of test results, extensive
undercover surveillance, and misleading and false statements given to the general public and our elected officials.
The most egregious was an armed invasion of our family farm and the subsequent seizure and destruction of our
animals and livelihood. In an attempt to find a nonexistent disease, the USDA used every possible BSE testing
method on our sheep, sometimes running five or six tests per animal, but to no avail. Our sheep were healthy. None
of our sheep had BSE or any other disease. However, when a brief "enhanced" BSE surveillance program uncovered
three cases of BSE in American cattle, the USDA quickly announced it would reduce testing for BSE by 90 percent,

not increase-reduce. How is this protecting the American public? The USDA does not want to test American cattle
for BSE and they are preventing any private company from doing so. The question is Why? Once again it comes
down to the corporate-controlled USDA doing the bidding of its corporate sponsors, in this case the beef packers,
slaughterhouses, and feed lots-rather than what is best for the American public. The Creekstone v USDA lawsuit will
head back to federal district court for one more ruling, and along with Chief Judge Sentelle who gave the dissenting
opinion on the appeals court decision, I will be watching to see if the district court's review of USDA's denial to allow

Currently the USDA screens less

than 1 percent of the cattle slaughtered each year for BSE , and this 1 percent is
comprised of only downer cows-despite the fact that downers are already
supposedly banned from the food chain. Therefore, not a single piece of beef
destined for human consumption in the United States is tested for BSE. So while the
judicial system continues to give deference to the USDA, I will give deference to those who truly
deserve it-my fellow farmers who raise meat I trust. Not meat stamped with the
USDA seal of approval.
Creekstone to test can survive the arbitrary and capricious standard.

---Off-Case---

Add-ons

Cali Ag
Meat production devastates California ag
McWilliams 14 (James McWilliams-professor of history at Texas State University,
Meat Makes the Planet Thirsty, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meatmakes-the-planet-thirsty.html?_r=0 ,MARCH 7, 2014)
AUSTIN, Tex. CALIFORNIA is experiencing one of its worst droughts on record. Just two
and a half years ago, Folsom Lake, a major reservoir outside Sacramento, was at 83 percent capacity. Today its
down to 36 percent. In January, there was no measurable rain in downtown Los Angeles. Gov. Jerry Brown has

The
situation, despite last weeks deluge in Southern California, is dire . With California producing
nearly half of the fruit and vegetables grown in the United States, attention has
naturally focused on the water required to grow popular foods such as walnuts, broccoli,
declared a state of emergency. President Obama has pledged $183 million in emergency funding.

lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries, almonds and grapes. These crops are the ones that a recent report in the magazine
Mother Jones highlighted as being unexpectedly water intensive. Who knew, for example, that it took 5.4 gallons to
produce a head of broccoli, or 3.3 gallons to grow a single tomato? This information about the water footprint of
food products that is, the amount of water required to produce them is important to understand, especially for

But for those truly

interested in lowering their water footprint, those numbers pale next to the water
required to fatten livestock. A 2012 study in the journal Ecosystems by Mesfin M. Mekonnen and Arjen Y.
Hoekstra, both at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, tells an important story. Beef turns out to
have an overall water footprint of roughly four million gallons per ton produced . By
a state that dedicates about 80 percent of its water to agriculture. [image omitted]

contrast, the water footprint for sugar crops like sugar beets is about 52,000 gallons per ton; for vegetables its

Factor in the kind of water

required to produce these foods, and the water situation looks even worse fo r the
future of animal agriculture in drought-stricken regions that use whats known as
blue water, or water stored in lakes, rivers and aquifers, which California and
much of the West depend on. Vegetables use about 11,300 gallons per ton of blue water; starchy roots,
85,000 gallons per ton; and for starchy roots its about 102,200 gallons per ton.

about 4,200 gallons per ton; and fruit, about 38,800 gallons per ton. By comparison, pork consumes 121,000
gallons of blue water per ton of meat produced; beef, about 145,000 gallons per ton; and butter, some 122,800
gallons per ton. Theres a reason other than the drought that Folsom Lake has dropped as precipitously as it has.
Dont look at kale as the culprit. (Although some nuts, namely almonds, consume considerable blue water, even
more than beef.) That said, a single plant is leading Californias water consumption .
Unfortunately, its a plant thats not generally cultivated for humans: alfalfa. Grown on over a million acres in

alfalfa sucks up more water than any other crop in the state. And it has one
primary destination: cattle. Increasingly popular grass-fed beef operations typically
rely on alfalfa as a supplement to pasture grass. Alfalfa hay is also an integral feed
source for factory-farmed cows, especially those involved in dairy production. If Californians were
California,

eating all the beef they produced, one might write off alfalfas water footprint as the cost of nurturing local food
systems. But thats not whats happening. Californians are sending their alfalfa, and thus their water, to Asia. The

Its more profitable to ship alfalfa hay from California to China than
from the Imperial Valley to the Central Valley. Alfalfa growers are now exporting
some 100 billion gallons of water a year from this drought-ridden region to the other
side of the world in the form of alfalfa. All as more Asians are embracing the American-style, meatreason is simple.

hungry diet. Further intensifying this ecological injustice are incidents such as the Rancho Feeding Corporations
recent recall of 8.7 million pounds of beef because the meat lacked a full federal inspection. That equals 631.6
million gallons of water wasted by an industry with a far more complex and resource-intensive supply chain than
the systems that move strawberries from farm to fork. This comparison isnt to suggest that produce isnt

plants arent slaughtered, a process

that demands 132 gallons of water per animal carcass, contributing even more to
livestocks expanding water footprint. Its understandable for concerned consumers to feel helpless in
the face of these complex industrial and global realities. But in the case of agriculture and drought,
theres a clear and accessible action most citizens can take: reducing or, ideally,
occasionally recalled, but the Rancho incident reminds us that

eliminating the consumption of animal products. Changing ones diet to replace 50 percent of
animal products with edible plants like legumes, nuts and tubers results in a 30 percent reduction in an individuals
food-related water footprint. Going vegetarian, a better option in many respects, reduces that water footprint by
almost 60 percent.

Key to global food supply

Slezak 14 (Steven Slezay, California drought threatens to destabilize agriculture
markets, http://globalriskinsights.com/2014/02/25/california-drought-threatens-todestabilize-agriculture-markets/, February 25, 2014)
Food availability, affordability and quality drive food security problems in

the world . The drought in California threatens to exacerbate food security

problems in all three issue areas. The state of California is deep into the third year of a record drought.
An excellent map from the University of Nebraska shows that nearly 91% of the state is undergoing severe to
exceptional drought. Seventeen communities scattered across the state are expected to run out of water by midMay. Last year was Californias driest since it became a state in 1850. This year looks to be the driest in over 400
years, according to climatologists at the University of California Berkeley. Scientists say more is in store. Bill Patzert,
a climatologist at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory believes a 20-year drought cycle began in 2000. Scott Stine, a

We continue to
run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is about
seven years. Were living in a dream world. So whats the big deal? As they say,
this time its different. The ongoing California drought provides a disturbing glimpse
of future water shortages and their impact on agricultural production and food
security. Californias agricultural heartland is the Central Valley, a vast
professor of environmental studies at Cal State East Bay, told the San Jose Mercury News,

area comprising 22,500 square miles (58,000 square kilometers) of the worlds most productive agricultural land.
State-wide farm production was $44.7 billion in 2012, making California the largest agriculture producer in the US.

The Central Valley represents about 72% of this production. California is also the
countrys largest agriculture exporter, selling 39% of annual production overseas.
The USDA estimates that the value of US agricultural exports in 2011 was $136
billion, meaning California alone accounts for about 12% of all US farm exports. As a

result of the drought, Central Valley farms have left fallow 500,000 acres (202,000 hectares), roughly 8% of the
regions total. Agriculture production is shifting from low margin fruit and produce such as cantaloupe to more
profitable commodities like tree nuts and tomatoes. The droughts impact on overall agriculture production could
amount to losses of $1.6 billion for farms and approach $5 billion for California agribusiness in general. Were from
the government, and were here to help if youre a fish The political response has been predictable and unhelpful.
California Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency in January to open taps of federal relief dollars. For
the first time in its 54-year history, the State Water Project will not provide any water to the 750,000 acres (300,000
hectares) of farmland it services. The nations largest state-built water and power development and conveyance
system, according to its website, will not convey resources contracted by agriculture. Neither will the federal
governments Central Valley Project deliver agriculture water this year. Though the project was, in its own words,
originally conceivedto protect the Central Valley from crippling water shortages, it will not prevent water
shortages from crippling farmswith the possible loss of over 100,000 local jobs. Water destined to benefit
endangered fish species, such as the Delta Smelt (a short-lived, 6-cm long, reproduction-challenged member of the
Osmeridae family), will remain at 100% allocation. Their population is so low that the State of California says it is
exceptionally difficult to determine the actual number of Delta smelt.

Food security likely to be

affected How all this is playing out in California is disturbing

enough. But the droughts impact on food supplies will be felt far
beyond the Golden State. The drought in California threatens to
exacerbate food supply shortages in other parts of the world as
higher US prices shift production and supply towards satisfying US
demand. Supply shortfalls will be met by higher prices, and markets are
beginning to reflect this. Just one example: the February 2014 Live Cattle futures

contract on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has appreciated 9.5% since midNovember. The possibility of global food price inflation cannot easily be dismissed.
We can also expect to see greater volumes of food being imported to the US this year, in response to higher prices.
To the extent global supplies and production will respond to American market price signals, food diverted for US

In the face of growing global demand for

food, higher prices and reduced supply do not bode well for the 842 million people
who already do not have enough to eat. Four million live in California, and a half
million of them reside in the Central Valley.
buyers will not be available for consumption by others.

Food insecurity causes great power war

Brown, 9 (Lester R, - founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy

Institute Can Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization? Scientific American, May)
The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to
cause government collapse. Those crises are brought on by ever worsening
environmental degradation One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change.
Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well.
But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today's economic crisis.

the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems

preposterous. Who would not find it hard to think seriously about such a complete departure from what we
For most of us,

expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed a warning so dire--and how would we go about
responding to it? We are so inured to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed to
dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into chaos--and Earth might collide
with an asteroid, too! For many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic

The combined effects of those trends and the political tensions

they generate point to the breakdown of governments and societies . Yet I, too, have
trends and their interactions.

resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global

Our continuing failure to deal with the

environmental declines that are undermining the world food economy--most
important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures-- forces me to
conclude that such a collapse is possible. The Problem of Failed States Even a cursory look at the vital
civilization. I can no longer ignore that risk.

signs of our current world order lends unwelcome support to my conclusion. And those of us in the environmental
field are well into our third decade of charting trends of environmental decline without seeing any significant effort
to reverse a single one. In six of the past nine years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing
a steady drawdown in stocks. When the 2008 harvest began, world carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin
when the new harvest begins) were at 62 days of consumption, a near record low. In response, world grain prices in

As demand for food rises faster

than supplies are growing, the resulting food-price inflation puts severe stress on
the governments of countries already teetering on the edge of chaos. Unable to buy grain
the spring and summer of last year climbed to the highest level ever.

or grow their own, hungry people take to the streets. Indeed, even before the steep climb in grain prices in 2008,
the number of failing states was expanding [see sidebar at left]. Many of their problem's stem from a failure to slow

if the food situation continues to deteriorate, entire

nations will break down at an ever increasing rate. We have entered a new era in geopolitics. In
the 20th century the main threat to international security was superpower conflict;
today it is failing states. It is not the concentration of power but its absence that puts us at risk. States fail
the growth of their populations. But

when national governments can no longer provide personal security, food security and basic social services such as
education and health care. They often lose control of part or all of their territory. When governments lose their
monopoly on power, law and order begin to disintegrate. After a point, countries can become so dangerous that
food relief workers are no longer safe and their programs are halted; in Somalia and Afghanistan, deteriorating

Failing states are of international concern

because they are a source of terrorists, drugs, weapons and refugees, threatening
political stability everywhere. Somalia, number one on the 2008 list of failing states, has become a base
conditions have already put such programs in jeopardy.

for piracy. Iraq, number five, is a hotbed for terrorist training. Afghanistan, number seven, is the world's leading
supplier of heroin. Following the massive genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, refugees from that troubled state, thousands
of armed soldiers among them, helped to destabilize neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (number six).

Our global civilization depends on a functioning network of politically healthy

nation-states to control the spread of infectious disease, to manage the international monetary system, to

If the system for controlling

infectious diseases--such as polio, SARS or avian flu--breaks down, humanity will be in
trouble. Once states fail, no one assumes responsibility for their debt to outside lenders. If enough states
disintegrate, their fall will threaten the stability of global civilization itself.
control international terrorism and to reach scores of other common goals.

Food + Water scarcity

Reduction in meat consumption secures global food and water
supplies
ScienceDaily 14 (Eating less meat: Solution to reduce water use?,

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140804100107.htm, August 4, 2014)

Reducing the use of animal products can have a considerable

impact on areas suffering scarce water resources, as meat production
requires more water than other agricultural products .

"Diet change together with other actions,

such as reduction of food losses and waste, may tackle the future challenges of food security," states researcher
Mika Jalava from Aalto University. Growing population and climate change are likely to increase the pressure on

diet change has been suggested as one of the measures

contributing to adequate food security for growing population. The researchers
assessed the impact of diet change on global water resources over four scenarios, where the
already limited water resources and

meat consumption was gradually reduced while diet recommendations in terms of energy supply, proteins and fat
were followed.

The study published in Environmental Research Letters is the first

global-scale analysis with a focus on changes in national diets and their

impact on the blue and green water use of food consumption . Food supply
for growing population Global population is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050 ,
adding over 2 billion mouths to be fed to the current population , according to the UN. By

reducing the animal product contribution in the diet, global green water (rainwater) consumption decreases up to
21 % while for blue water (irrigation water) the reductions would be up to 14 %. In other words ,

by shifting to
vegetarian diet we could secure adequate food supply for an additional 1.8 billion
people without increasing the use of water resources . The potential savings are, however,
distributed unevenly, and even more important, their potential alleviation on water scarcity varies widely from

The researchers at Aalto University found substantial

regional differences in diet change potential to reduce water use . In Latin America, Europe,
country to country. Regional differences

Central and Eastern Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, diet change reduces mainly green water use. In Finland, for
example, turning into a meat free diet would decrease the daily green water use of a Finn over 530 litres but at the

In the Middle East region, North

America, Australia and Oceania, also blue water use would decrease considerably . In
same time resulting nearly 50 litres increase in blue water use.

South and Southeast Asia, on the other hand, diet change does not result in savings in water use, as in these
regions the diet is already largely based on a minimal amount of products.

Water wars escalate

Barlow 8National chairperson of The Council of Canadians. Co-founder of the Blue Planet Project.

Chairs the board of

Washington-based Food & Water Watch and is also an executive member of the San Franciscobased International Forum on
Globalization and a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. She is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates.
Served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly (Maude, The Global Water Crisis
and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, 25 February 2008,
http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_global_water_crisis_and_the_coming_battle_for_the_right_to_water)

water crises dwindling freshwater supplies, inequitable access to water and the corporate control
pose the greatest threat of our time to the planet and to our survival. Together with
impending climate change from fossil fuel emissions, the water crises impose some life-or-death
decisions on us all. Unless we collectively change our behavior, we are heading toward a
world of deepening conflict and potential wars over the dwindling supplies of freshwater between nations,
The three

of water

between rich and poor, between the public and the private interest, between rural and urban populations, and
between the competing needs of the natural world and industrialized humans. Water Is Becoming a Growing Source
of Conflict Between Countries Around the world, more that 215 major rivers and 300 groundwater basins and
aquifers are shared by two or more countries, creating tensions over ownership and use of the precious waters they
contain. Growing

shortages and unequal distribution of water are causing disagreements, sometimes

violent, and becoming a security risk in many regions. Britains

former defense secretary, John Reid,

warns

of coming water wars. In a public statement on the eve of a 2006 summit on climate change, Reid
predicted that violence and political conflict would become more likely as watersheds turn to deserts, glaciers melt

water crisis was becoming a

security issue and that Britains armed forces should be prepared to tackle conflicts, including warfare,
over dwindling water sources. Such changes make the emergence of violent conflict more, rather
than less, likely, former British prime minister Tony Blair told The Independent. The blunt truth is that the lack of
and water supplies are poisoned. He went so far as to say that the global
global

water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur. We

potential
conflict. These include Israel, Jordan and Palestine, who all rely on the Jordan River, which is controlled
by Israel; Turkey and Syria, where Turkish plans to build dams on the Euphrates River brought the country to
should see this as a warning sign. The Independent gave several other examples of regions of

the brink of war with Syria in 1998, and where Syria now accuses Turkey of deliberately meddling with its water

China and India, where the Brahmaputra River has caused tension between the two countries in the
Angola, Botswana and
Namibia, where disputes over the Okavango water basin that have flared in the past are now threatening to reignite as Namibia is proposing to build a threehundred- kilometer pipeline that will drain the delta; Ethiopia and
Egypt, where population growth is threatening conflict along the Nile; and Bangladesh and India, where
supply;

past, and where Chinas proposal to divert the river is re-igniting the divisions;

flooding in the Ganges caused by melting glaciers in the Himalayas is wreaking havoc in Bangladesh, leading to a
rise in illegal, and unpopular, migration to India.

Food insecurity causes great power war

Brown, 9 (Lester R, - founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy

Institute Can Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization? Scientific American, May)
The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to
cause government collapse. Those crises are brought on by ever worsening
environmental degradation One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change.
Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well.
But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today's economic crisis.

the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems

preposterous. Who would not find it hard to think seriously about such a complete departure from what we
For most of us,

expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed a warning so dire--and how would we go about
responding to it? We are so inured to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed to
dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into chaos--and Earth might collide
with an asteroid, too! For many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic

The combined effects of those trends and the political tensions

they generate point to the breakdown of governments and societies . Yet I, too, have
trends and their interactions.

resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global

Our continuing failure to deal with the

environmental declines that are undermining the world food economy--most
important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures-- forces me to
conclude that such a collapse is possible. The Problem of Failed States Even a cursory look at the vital
civilization. I can no longer ignore that risk.

signs of our current world order lends unwelcome support to my conclusion. And those of us in the environmental
field are well into our third decade of charting trends of environmental decline without seeing any significant effort
to reverse a single one. In six of the past nine years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing
a steady drawdown in stocks. When the 2008 harvest began, world carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin
when the new harvest begins) were at 62 days of consumption, a near record low. In response, world grain prices in

As demand for food rises faster

than supplies are growing, the resulting food-price inflation puts severe stress on
the governments of countries already teetering on the edge of chaos. Unable to buy grain
the spring and summer of last year climbed to the highest level ever.

or grow their own, hungry people take to the streets. Indeed, even before the steep climb in grain prices in 2008,
the number of failing states was expanding [see sidebar at left]. Many of their problem's stem from a failure to slow

if the food situation continues to deteriorate, entire

nations will break down at an ever increasing rate. We have entered a new era in geopolitics. In
the 20th century the main threat to international security was superpower conflict;
the growth of their populations. But

today it is failing states. It is not the concentration of power but its absence that puts us at risk.

States fail
when national governments can no longer provide personal security, food security and basic social services such as
education and health care. They often lose control of part or all of their territory. When governments lose their
monopoly on power, law and order begin to disintegrate. After a point, countries can become so dangerous that
food relief workers are no longer safe and their programs are halted; in Somalia and Afghanistan, deteriorating

Failing states are of international concern

because they are a source of terrorists, drugs, weapons and refugees, threatening
political stability everywhere. Somalia, number one on the 2008 list of failing states, has become a base
conditions have already put such programs in jeopardy.

for piracy. Iraq, number five, is a hotbed for terrorist training. Afghanistan, number seven, is the world's leading
supplier of heroin. Following the massive genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, refugees from that troubled state, thousands
of armed soldiers among them, helped to destabilize neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (number six).

Our global civilization depends on a functioning network of politically healthy

nation-states to control the spread of infectious disease, to manage the international monetary system, to
control international terrorism and to reach scores of other common goals. If the system for controlling
infectious diseases--such as polio, SARS or avian flu--breaks down, humanity will be in
trouble. Once states fail, no one assumes responsibility for their debt to outside lenders. If enough states
disintegrate, their fall will threaten the stability of global civilization itself.

Warming
Beef production creates huge GHG emissions
McGrath 14 (Matt McGrath-Environment correspondent for BBC ,Beef
environment cost 10 times that of other livestock,
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28409704 , 21 July 2014)
A new study suggests that the production of beef is around 10 times more

damaging to the environment than any other form of livestock.

Beef cattle
need 28 times more land and 11 times more irrigation water than pork, poultry,
eggs or dairy. The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. While
Scientists measured the environment inputs required to produce the main US sources of protein.

it has long been known that beef has a greater environmental impact than other meats, the authors of this paper
say theirs is is the first to quantify the scale in a comparative way. Beef footprint The researchers developed a
uniform methodology that they were able to apply to all five livestock categories and to four measures of
environmental performance. "We have a sharp view of the comparative impact that beef, pork, poultry, dairy and
eggs have in terms of land and water use, reactive nitrogen discharge, and greenhouse gas emissions," lead author
Prof Gidon Eshel, from Bard College in New York, told BBC News. "The uniformity and expansive scope is novel,
unique, and important," he said. The scientists used data from from 2000-2010 from the US department of
agriculture to calculate the amount of resources required for all the feed consumed by edible livestock. They then
worked out the amount of hay, silage and concentrates such as soybeans required by the different species to put on

They also include greenhouse gas emissions not just from the
production of feed for animals but from their digestion and manure. As ruminants,
cattle can survive on a wide variety of plants but they have a very low energy
conversion efficiency from what they eat. As a result, beef comes out clearly as the
food animal with the biggest environmental impact. [image omitted] As well as the effects on
land and water, cattle release five times more greenhouse gas and consume six times
more nitrogen than eggs or poultry. Cutting down on beef can have a big
a kilo of weight.

environmental impact they say. But the same is not true for all livestock. "One can reasonably
be an environmentally mindful eater, designing one's diet with its environmental impact in mind, while not resorting
to exclusive reliance on plant food sources," said Prof Eshel. "In fact, eliminating beef, and replacing it with
relatively efficiency animal-based alternatives such as eggs, can achieve an environmental improvement
comparable to switching to plant food source." Other researchers say the conclusions of the new study are
applicable in Europe, even though the work is based on US data. " The

overall environmental footprint

of beef is particularly large because it combines a low production efficiency with
very high volume," said Prof Mark Sutton, from the UK's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. "The result is that
the researchers estimate that over 60% of the environmental burden of livestock in the
US results from beef. Although the exact numbers will be different for Europe (expecting a larger role of
dairy), the overall message will be similar: Cattle dominate the livestock footprint of both
Europe and US."

extinction
Mazo 10 PhD in Paleoclimatology from UCLA

Jeffrey Mazo, Managing Editor, Survival and Research Fellow for Environmental
Security and Science Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in
London, 3-2010, Climate Conflict: How global warming threatens security and what
to do about it, pg. 122
The best estimates for global warming to the end of the century range from 2.54.~C above pre-industrial levels, depending on the scenario. Even in the bestcase scenario, the low end of the likely range is 1.goC, and in the worst 'business

as usual' projections, which actual emissions have been matching, the range of
likely warming runs from 3.1--7.1C. Even keeping emissions at constant 2000
levels (which have already been exceeded), global temperature would still be
expected to reach 1.2C (O'9""1.5C)above pre-industrial levels by the end of the
century." Without early and severe reductions in emissions, the effects
of climate change in the second half of the twenty-first century are
likely to be catastrophic for the stability and security of countries in the
developing world - not to mention the associated human tragedy. Climate
change could even undermine the strength and stability of emerging and
advanced economies, beyond the knock-on effects on security of
widespread state failure and collapse in developing countries.' And
although they have been condemned as melodramatic and alarmist, many
informed observers believe that unmitigated climate change beyond the end
of the century could pose an existential threat to civilisation." What is
certain is that there is no precedent in human experience for such rapid
change or such climatic conditions, and even in the best case adaptation
to these extremes would mean profound social, cultural and political
changes.

Topicality

T
ADT is surveillance
USDA 2015 (February 15, SA Monitoring and Surveillance
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wps/portal/banner/help?1dmy&urile=wcm%3Apath
%3A/APHIS_Content_Library/SA_Our_Focus/SA_Animal_Health/SA_Monitoring_And_S
urveillance)
These programs conduct or contribute to animal health surveillance in the United
States.

National Animal Health Surveillance System (NAHSS) - NAHSS integrates animal health monitoring and surveillance
activities conducted by many federal and state government agencies into a comprehensive and coordinated
system.
US Status for reportable diseases as reported to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE)
National Animal Health Reporting System (NAHRS) - Information on the presence of reportable animal diseases in
the United States.
National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS) - National studies on animal health and health management
practices of U.S. livestock and poultry.
National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN) - This network of state animal health laboratories provides,
among other things, laboratory data to meet epidemiological and disease reporting needs.

Animal Disease Traceability

National Poultry Improvement Program (NPIP) - National poultry health monitoring and surveillance.
National Aquaculture Program (NAP) - National aquaculture health monitoring and surveillance.
National Surveillance Unit - organization within APHIS tasked with coordinating activities related to animal health
surveillance.

Census is surveillance violates rights leads to seizure

Adams 13 (Mike Adams,-the Health Ranger and Editor of NaturalNews.com,
USDA agricultural census program is a covert surveillance operation to compile
government database of food and farm assets,
http://www.naturalnews.com/039652_USDA_agriculture_census_government_surveill
ance.html# ,Wednesday, March 27, 2013)
(NaturalNews) The USDA "census of agriculture" is a government-run farm surveillance
program designed to register and inventory detailed private data on farm assets,
operations and personnel. A census form is mailed to each farmer in the United
States, accompanied by threats of compliance and a warning that farmers who do
not comply will be visited in person by government agents.