Un-lawful possession of laying hens

I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to hijack the thread. I thought the original post was about freedom to raise chickens. I assumed that a discussion of basic liberties or the lack thereof was exactly what you were addressing. AND there are some differences between Canada and the USA on some such liberties. I only gave healthcare an example to answer a challenge to provide an example.

As far as NAIS, it's a done deal...federal law...already signed off on by the president and funded to the tune of $33.3 million...It will be administered through the USDA's APHIS division. States will have to follow federal mandates, however they come down and will have very little flexibility in variation state to state. It's a Federal Program, and will therefore be administered nationwide eventually. It's voluntary for now, but not for long.

What happened to the Canadian chicken farmer is not even similar to NAIS. He evidently violated some quota and grading laws in Canada.

Again, it's all yours. I promise to be good and not hijack anything. I'm morally opposed to hijacking.

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"The most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." - Sir Isaac Newton
(A REAL scientist)

I had actually meant to mention that yes I think NAIS is the thin edge of some kind of wedge, with much worse to come. Maybe not a quota but a licensing system to farm, and more and more regulations regarding land use, stocking rates, marketing rules, inspections. Canada has a National Identification system already. Here's how it works in a nut shell. We buy ear tags that are then registered to our farm (us really the land base is unimportant) we must tag every animal that leaves our farm for any reaso. If we sell it as breeding stock we keep a record of who we sold it to. If it goes to the abitoir, no record kept. (its only tracable for a short while.) If we buy off farm stock, we must retag any animal that loses it's tag and record the new number to the animals old record. Yeah right that's gonna happen in a flock of hundreds of sheep, but your supposed to try. Fair enough. So long as there's never a health issue liek mad cow or scrapie you never have to release the record. There's bound to be exceptions but the govt. doesn't routinely collect the data. They do not and last I heard don't plan on collecting a comprehnsive list of who has how many animals. As most of my sheep don't leave the farm, most of my sheep are untagged. None of my market lambs numbers were recorded in a permanent record after slaughter. I asked my butcher if they kept the tag records, and he doesn't. Quite different than NAIS, its simply tracability of food which I agree with.

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Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup........

Don't sweat it. I just saw it spiraling (one or two l's?) and figured it needed stopping before someone said something that they'd rather they hadn't...

Boleyz, it is about the freedom to raise chickens. And I guess that's how I see it relating to NAIS. That freedom will be limited if this becomes mandatory. Yeah, it was about grading and having 8900 birds too many up in Canada; but why is there a law about quotas? And why is it hard to see that NAIS could lead to this, and even worse?

Sometimes I jump from point A to point D without taking note of B and C. Like the kid who knows the answer in math, but not how they get to that answer. I guess that's what I'm doing here with NAIS. I see all the other things that this opens doors for. Yes, I know Carmichael was breaking the law. Look at the result. Do we want a law that limits our freedom to raise those chickens (or anything else) here in the US? Do we want to offer the government every bit of knowledge concerning our whereabouts and what we're raising so that they, too, can send their officials onto our farms to take what they see as theirs (national herd, y'know) and not ours?

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Mustang Diaries

"It's called a lance...hellooo!"

Check this link...pages and pages of California Law already regulating egg production.

You're too late...it's already happened. NAIS could not possibly make it more restrictive than it already is. It will merely add one more cost and drive the price of eggs up at the market.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cacode...631-27644.html

The basic freedom to farm as you please and sell as you wish was lost years ago with "Farm Subsidies". When Uncle Sam began writing out checks to farmers to subsidize their losses and regulate their production, it naturally spiraled into the nightmare of govt. regulation that it now is.

Whenever Americans look to the govt. to "Fix" their problems, financial or otherwise, we give up a little bit of our freedom. The govt. will "fix" it, but they will also regulate it and control it to make sure its done "fairly". They will also use such opportunities to grow a big govt. agency to regulate it. Hence, we have the USDA.

I don't know the ratio now, but several years ago someone ran the numbers and discovered that there were 3 USDA employees for every 1 farmer in the USA. Those people need something to do, so here comes more regulation so that they can perpetuate their agencies and grow them even more.

Freedom to farm is over, and has been over for a long time. NAIS is just the latest the installment of govt regulation.

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"The most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." - Sir Isaac Newton
(A REAL scientist)

The Congress (or the President) has no ability to mandate anything like this to the States. The States are Sovereign under the Constitution and all powers not explicitly granted to the Federal Givernement are reserved to the States. That is why the Feds have to bribe states through highway funding to set speed limits and drinking laws.

NAIS purports to get around this because it is a "regulation" and not a "law". Fecal matter. The States have to oppose this or they will continue to see sovereignity erode. Individuals have to oppose this or they will see farming rights continually whittled at.

Yes, but tracking programs in Canada lead to the raid. I see the imposition of (more) tracking here as leading to more interference with farmers, besides the fact that even a few dimes a head in increased cost will push many farmers out of business. Big business does not want local small farms.

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The Constitution is more than paper— Ron Paul 2008

I doubt any state will refuse to comply with NAIS for very long. The way the feds get states to agree with their mandates is to withhold federal funds for other programs. It nearly always works. I fail to see how anyone could rationalize the government having ANY say in whether or not someone raises chickens or sells eggs and if so, how many. If he was selling medium eggs in a carton marked large, don't you think his customers would quit buying from him? Some love the nanny state.

You're right about the Constitution. So were Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. They fought the civil war to prevent Federalism from overtaking the Sovereign rights of the States.

However, the Confederacy lost, and the strong, Federal government took over our land and our States.

Lest anyone wanna jump me, I am absolutely opposed to slavery, but slavery was NOT the main issue in the Civil War. It was not a war that was fought to liberate the slaves, although that was one good outcome. Actually, Abe Lincoln was a late-comer to the abolishionist movement. He saw it as a wedge issue and used it to help unify the North in the face of their appalling losses on the battlefield.

The reason that many Honorable men fought and died for the Confederacy was to preserve a prope2 application of the Constitution, which was truly framed around the idea of powerful, Sovereign States, with a small, unobtrusive Federal govt. The only "Rights" That are Constitutionally allowed to the Federal Govt. Is the Coining of currency, the Federal Judiciary, and the National Defense. The Federal Govt. was never granted rule over things like welfare, SSI, USDA or any of the many other things they do. Indeed, 90% of Federal authority has been usurped, rather than granted by the Constitution. BUT...

That is the reality of our Nation, since State Sovereignty was basically surrendered by and through the Civil War. Make no mistake, you can oppose NAIS at the State level, and raise a ruckus, and indeed you should. That is your right and it may draw some attention. But if Washington doesn't change it's course on NAIS it will certainly come to every state as a mandatory requirement.

States will fall in line. The Fed's USDA is one of their most powerful agencies and their leverage in every State is phenomenal. You might do better to call your Washington Reps, and even hope that someone makes a case against it that goes to the Supreme Court. That's the only realistic way I see of stopping it.

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"The most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." - Sir Isaac Newton
(A REAL scientist)

All agreed. That is not the way the Civil War is taught in the North, but it is much more accurate. I never realized that Gettysburg was north of D.C. until I passed through it on the way to Washington. They do not like to think how close the war came to going the other way. They also never mention that Virginia only seceded after they were ordered to raise divisions to invade other states or Lincoln issued the Emmancipation Proclamation at the end of the War.

And, yes, the Confederacy lost the war. In the end, maybe good, mybe bad. Who can tell? At some point, however, the pendelum has to stop its swing and a new line needs to be drawn. I would like to think this can be done with politics, but history makes me pessimistic. I do not like the country my daughter may have to grow up in. Hopefully, grassroots efforts and civil disobedience will turn the tide. Maybe the hearings on domestic spying programs will help, who knows. I am not a soldier and have no wish to become one.

Right now, what we have is a strong Federal government with almost impotent state governments. At the same time, we have a strong swing toward the executive. This is a recipe for disaster, putting all of the power in the hands of one person who has already proven that he will use it. Even if Bush was trustworthy, there is no way to know about his successor.

The battle over NAIS is not just one over convenience or the economics of small farming, though that alone would be enough for me to oppose it. It is the first in a series of conflicts over a number of federal programs which define our ability to be citizens instead of subjects. We have to make sure they are all opposed effectively.

If the states are forced to "tow the line", and I have little doubt you are right, it falls to the counties. If the counties cave, it falls to the land-owners organizations and farm co-operatives. I do not believe this can be allowed to continue. When I think of a country where initiatives like NAIS, National ID, domestic spying, NSLs, "homeland security", and so forth exist, I think of Germany.

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The Constitution is more than paper— Ron Paul 2008

Sorry, I didn't see the hijack comments until after I posted (note to self - read whole thread first before posting!)

Can someone help me understand why there is a problem with having some sort of restriction on how many chickens a person can have? If that was my
neighbour, I wonder if I wouldn't want it shut down!

This case is a good example of why some regulation does make sense - that many chooks are not for personal use. I don't care what the profit margin is - that's ridiculous.

I don't know about Canada, but here in Virginia, you cannot say eggs are a certain grade or size unless you're a licensed egg candler/grader. If they haven't been graded by someone with the proper license, any eggs you sell have to be marked "ungraded". Now of course, that doesn't stop you from telling your customers how fresh your eggs are (grade is partly determined by how fresh the eggs are, since the content of an egg evaporates over time and lowers the grade.) or unofficially candling them yourself just to ensure they do meet all grade AA or grade A standards....

Do you want the gooberment to tell you how many of anything you can have?

The parallel to NAIS is that laws will be made not for the purported reasons but to stop an entire class of activity we normally associate with an individual's freedom.

As every piece of land gets "registered" and every activity prescribed, and every animal chipped, tagged, and controlled we invite further laws that will be preferencial not to the individual but to power groups.

It will happen inevitably.

What tinknal said... Because what is too many for one person may not be too many for the next.

I can see why you wouldn't want 9000 chickens next door, because just a couple dozen can stink on the right day, but obviously this guy's neighbors came to make a stand for him. Could be he took care of the birds and the place doesn't reek. Yeah, unlikely...but could be.

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Mustang Diaries

"It's called a lance...hellooo!"

Not if they don't know, they won't. Some medium eggs look like large, and some large look like mediums. The eggs in Canada are sold as a certain size really according to weight, not visual size. So while you can pick up a large carton, look into it and say, "Hey, these are only mediums, they're too small," they may in fact be the weight of a large graded egg, so they pass. Not to say that an occasional misweighted egg passes through, but for the most part, they are correct.

That is where inspections come in: to make sure that the eggs are meeting size regulations. If a company cheats, they get busted eventually. If we just took their word for it, some would no doubt sneak smaller eggs in. See, generally the older the hen, the larger the egg---a farmer must financially support a hen longer to get the bigger eggs, in commercial hens at least that's how it goes! There is not as much of a demand for pee-wee/small eggs, so there is a watiting period for the prime laying period.

DD

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"The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese in the trap."

More developments on the original story:

Defiant egg farmer facing $2,000 daily fines

By NICK GARDINER

Staff Writer


SHANLY -- An area egg farmer is facing a $2,000 fine each day he refuses to turn over his laying hens to authorities with the Ontario Egg Producers.

Shawn Carmichael, 34, received a hand-delivered notice Wednesday that he must notify the producers by Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. of his intention to turn over the chickens or face the daily fine.

Many of the chickens had been loaded in cages aboard a transport truck during a raid last Thursday before members of the Leeds and Grenville Landowners Association arrived on the scene and helped Carmichael block their exit.

Over the course of a daylong standoff, many of the birds died before the landowners took matters into their own hands and unloaded the truck while authorities backed off from their plans to confiscate the chickens and eggs.

Harry Pelissero, general manager of the egg producers' group, said the landowners' actions won't stop the proceedings against Carmichael.

"Under the Farm Products Marketing Act, we have the right to seize illegal fowl in his possession," said Pelissero.

"In order to lessen his exposure (to the daily fines), he can call us by 4:30 p.m. on April 4 and we'll proceed from there."

He said Carmichael does not have a quota with the egg marketing board so he is not allowed to have more than 100 chickens on site.

He said their evidence indicates Carmichael actually has 9,000 chickens and if they are turned over he will be left with some stock to comply with regulations.

"We'll leave him the 100 he's allowed under the law," said Pelissero.

He said the daily fine may be applied retroactively to the day of the raid but it could also be waived if Carmichael complies willingly.

"The more co-operative he is, the greater chance for us to take that into consideration," said Pelissero.

He said charges pending against Carmichael include illegal possession of fowl, selling ungraded eggs and failing to pay licensing fees.

Carmichael, who has not been formally advised of the charges yet, declined to comment on the latest development on the advice of legal counsel.

Jacqueline Fennell, president of the local landowners association, said she is disappointed the egg producers aren't being investigated for what she says was inhumane treatment of the chickens, which were packed into tight metal cages and left untended on an unventilated truck when the standoff developed last week.

"We really need to focus on the fact these people handled these chickens so cruelly. No one has followed up on this," said Fennell.

She said the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), which also participated in last week's raid in an effort to collect the eggs, has a duty to ensure humane treatment of the chickens but failed to act on concerns expressed by landowners last week.

Similarly, the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals deferred to the federal and provincial inspectors and failed to respond to landowners' concerns, she said.

"If this was a farmer treating the animals in this way, they would be charged at the drop of a hat," she said.

Pelissero has said previously that the chickens are normally transported in the manner that was being followed during the raid and rejects complaints that they were treated inhumanely.

Meanwhile, the CFIA plans to proceed with its own legal proceedings despite the interruption of last week's raid.

Taras Melnyk, regional operations co-ordinator, wouldn't speak in detail about the agency's plans except to say the investigation is continuing.

"I think it's best to wait until the investigation closes or it's before the courts for these details to be discussed," said Melnyk.

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"The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese in the trap."

Person1: Quickly, hire someone to think for us.

Person2: Why ?

Person1: So that we dont have to take responsibility for ourselves !

Person2: What are you talking about ?

Person1: ONE MAN CAN NOT POSSIBLY BE RESPONSIBLE ENOUGH TO DECIDE IF HE SHOULD EAT AN EGG WITHOUT PROPER GOVERNMENT APPROVAL, INSPECTION, LICENSE AND QUOTA !!!!! ARE YOU INSANE !!!!! ?

Person2: I must be.

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Happiness is directly proportional to the ratio that trees out number humans.

OMG!!!!

I think i just ate a medium grade AA egg that what marked as a large grade A egg !!

Which governmental agency should i report this travesty of justice to ?

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Happiness is directly proportional to the ratio that trees out number humans.

No , i cant just buy another brand next time, it may cost me tens of cents extra ! we need a egg enforcement bureau, or perhaps we can just merge it into the ATF, the EATF !

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Happiness is directly proportional to the ratio that trees out number humans.

Eggs are graded by weight in the US as well.

Thanks for the update, DD. Personally, if they want the hens, I think they ought to pay him. Or perhaps he can have a chicken share, lol, like a cow or goat share for the milk? Everyone can buy 100 chickens from him, then get the eggs...of course they'll all still be on the same property so that probably wouldn't work either.

If the neighbors aren't complaining about the scent of a summer chicken, then it really shouldn't be an issue. Perhaps y'all ought to try to get that quota thing repealed. Ha! Yeah, well, one can dream...

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Mustang Diaries

"It's called a lance...hellooo!"

Sorry, but the world is too dammed crowded for us to always live without permits. It's sad, but true.

So, just as CITIES often have good reasons for banning livestock within city limits (smell & crowing is one thing on an isolated farmstread, but another thing entirely when 100 neighbors can be living close enough to be impacted).

Keeping a FEW chickens without a permit is fine.... and you'll notice that the article said he was ALLOWED to have up to 100 chickens without a permit. But the problem is when you've got a massive egg factory (9,000 chickens!) & are producing tens of thousands of eggs a week that you're selling without being inspected or monitored for health safety.

Remember, BIRD FLU is expected to reach North America this year (with migratory birds from Africa & Europe)..... this guy was just an epidemic waiting to happen. And that's not even mentioning that letting him go on at the large scale he was without permits & without inspections (& without paying money used to oversee consumer safety) means that a largish section of the area's public was "trusting him" blind (likely without realizing it) to have a safe product on his own merits & without making sure he was following industry standards dealing with safety.

Some home producer with 100 chickens or less is ABLE to devote lots of personal attention to their birds..... he's not. Some home producer is NOT going to be making much of their income off those 100 or fewer birds, so they're obviously NOT just in it for the money.... as he seems to be doing.

So unless you want to be fair & likewise exempt TYSON from permits & inspections & such......

(Another possible issue was the mention of his NOT having graded his eggs... you could be looking at a product misrepresentation issue. Product quantities are standardized for consumer protection.... people expect to GET 8 oz of milk if the carton says 8 oz, or a certain size egg if that's what the carton says. Ungraded eggs means he was selling them WITHOUT actually or accurately saying what size they really were.... which is not particularly harmful if it's a small home producer selling to neighbors, but can run into LOTS of defrauded consumers with 9,000 chickens like he had).