NAIT: FART Tax in drag

The NAIT scheme for identifying animals from the birth to the meat works has apparently welcomed by farmers with open arms. It has been sold by the Minister Of Biosecurity Jim Anderton primarily as a marketing tool with some limited use for traceability in a foot and mouth event.

Personally, I cannot see any gain other than to keep tag manufacturers in business producing RFID tags and electronic readers. Absolutely useless to me on a lifestyle block with less than 20 cattle beasts each of which carry the mandatory already expensive AHB tags (Animal Health Board, non-RFID). When the beasts arrive at the works, the head gets lopped off, end of traceability.

Just been reading the winning letter at this weeks NZ Farmer's Weekly (not online) by Jean Martin, Immediate Past President of Federated Farmers from Gisborne. She suggests that NAIT will be the ultimate government farm surveillance tool. The government will have all farm animals registered in a single database, with costs paid for by farmers.

By allowing this to happen the NAIT committee has undermined all those good farmers who voluntarily gave up their own time fighting red tape.

Instead they have allowed Big Brother to bring in a system as close as communism as you can get.

From there, she reckons, the next step is implementation of the ETS at farm balance date, by extracting the much derided Fart Tax as ruminant animals progress through the works.

Now the hidden agenda is fully exposed. NAIT is not a means of traceability or a marketing tool, it is the means of extracting another hidden tax.

NAIT is FART Tax in drag.