I think RFID can used for great purposes, especially in animals and shipping packages. What bothers me is legislation making it mandatory, or all but mandatory, to put them anyplace
If you are thinking that RFID chips in livestock bound for market is useful, as has been suggested by the Dept. of Agriculture, keep in mind that they are 100 percent useless for that stated purpose.
The reason is an RFID chip is an interdermal injection, and therefore, when an animal is skinned on the killing floor the hide is shipped to one place, and the meat is shipped to another. So the RFID chip doesn't do anything at all to help track an animals origin any more than the current system of ear tagging. At a sale, the rancher makes DARN sure the sale barn knows his name, address, phone, etc., because he is wanting his check to be mailed to him. So the sale barn knows already where the animal came from and has written record.
So an RFID chip doesn't help anything in the meat packing industry, because the chip goes with the hide.
What the RFID is about in agriculture, is simply a way around the Fourth Amendment.
It is a method of allowing the Homeland Security access to your real property, 24/7, since they want to assign a "geographically agricultural property" Identification Number to your Real Property, on the basis of being able to "track down" where an animal comes from in the event of a disease outbreak.
Keep in mind, that means if you own one single goat, horse, chicken or mule, etc. an only intend those animals to be used for private consumption or usage.
The current system of ear tagging does just that on meat animals, but the RFID chip doesn't go with the meat.
That kinda brings to mind the question of why the Federal Government or State Government would want to write a bill which allows Homeland Security 24/7 access to a property on which animals are kept that are NOT meant for market, and are NOT subject to Intrastate or Interstate Commerce.
The NAIS (National Animal Identification System) program which Texas initially passed a bill to "comply" with, (which was all but revoked with legislation to gut it this past session thanks to FARFA, the
Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance) was based upon false testimony by a member of the Texas Animal Health Commission according to Texas State Representative Patrick Rose and designed to lead the members of the Legislature to believe it had been mandated based upon the Interstate Commerce Regs.
However, they were led to believe that ALL animals were subject to the Federal Regulations even if the animals NEVER LEFT THE PROPERTY. Granted, the Legislators voting on that idiotic bill should have bothered to read the United States Constitution they swore to preserve previous to being bullied into passing a law just because somone TOLD them "a Federal Administrative Regulation" required" it, but that is another matter.
As you say, RFID chips may be fine if the owner wants to be the one to keep track of Fluffy or Rover, but when they begin telling us that we have to put a twelve dollar microchip into a two dollar chicken which we intend to raise for our own consumption, on our own property, for the purposes of allowing Homeland Security to be able to enter my property 24/7 in violation of the 4th Amendment, then it does tend to be a George Orwell type of idea.
A bunch of us in Texas were able to get it halted when we had about three thousand law abiding citizens march on the capitol in Austin after months and months of organizing and lobbying. But we shouldn't have to go to such extremes when simply taking about an hour to read the damned Constitution they swore to preserve pretty much would have disproved the "rumor" that it was "required by the Dept. of Agriculture."
We finally were able to get across to our "Representatives" that their job in State Govenrment is to represent the people of Texas, rather than be lackeys who will pass a law based soley upon the statement of a Animal Health Commission member seemingly serving as a spokesman for the Federal Government .
Especially when those administrators appear to simply be trying to sell a shit load of RFID chips for Verichip. After all, anyone who is involved in agriculture knows when you skin a goat, the hide goes one place, and the meat goes another. They would effect NOTHING as far as insuring human safety regarding meat.
RFID chips are a danger to the 4th Amendment, since it has already been proposed that the 4th be violated by a law allowing military law enforcement (Dept. of Homeland Security) to enter private property without cause or warrant.
Any time government makes a location device "mandatory" and wants to put yourself or your property on a "list" then it kinda makes you uncomforatable that one day they may even want to make it "mandatory" for humans.
After all, it's for the "safety of the children."
OC), a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solutions, is the creator of the ’Digital Angel’ implantable microchip with the advertising tag-line: “Technology That Cares”.
