American Farmers Tell China – We're with Trump!

This is some of the information that was passed around.
Given many farmers are college graduates from places like Purdue Univ, this really went over well:
USDA Handbook Advises Animal-ID Staff to Address Farmers “At The Sixth Grade Level”

A USDA “NAIS (National Animal Identification System) How-To Handbook,” most recently revised in February 2007, instructs all State and Federal NAIS staff aggressively to promote the supposedly “voluntary” premises ID program.  The goal of the campaign and the How-To Handbook is to “increase . . . premises registration results” and to promote during 2007 not only “continued growth in premises registration,” but also the “adoption of animal ID and tracing.”  (Handbook, p. 1; USDA’s NAIS Community Outreach bulletin, Feb. 2007, p. 1.)
The Handbook demands uniformity and strict adherence to four “key messages” that staff are to present to audiences of farmers when promoting NAIS.  As described by the USDA, these “key messages” “are organized into topic categories and supported with concise sentences.  They are designed for an audience reading at the sixth grade level.”  (Handbook, p. 41.)  … [and these Commies complain about President Trump’s language???]
After the original USDA mandatory NAIS plan, set forth in the Draft Strategic Plan and Draft Program Standards of April 2005, met with an unexpected level of strong opposition from farmers and animal owners, the USDA hired a public-relations firm to analyze the opposition and repackage NAIS with a more congenial-sounding message.  (Presentation by Dore Mobley, USDA/APHIS information officer, at the National Institute for Animal Agriculture’s “ID Expo,” August 2006.) 
USDA instructs Federal and State staff on how to manipulate media coverage of NAIS. 
The USDA makes clear to NAIS staff that spontaneous responses to the media are not acceptable.  As to Federal NAIS employees, we are told, “Federal staff are not authorized to handle media interviews.” Federal staff must refer all media matters to the USDA Legislative and Public Affairs Office (p. 16).   Staff are encouraged, however, to use such controlled channels as op-ed pieces, letters to the editor to correct “misinformation,” and canned interviews with experts; the USDA urges staff to rely on the “complete message control” available by communicating through a NAIS website (p. 17).
The USDA implies that the opposition consists of insignificant “groups and individuals” who are just somehow “mistaken”:  “The opposition’s information is largely based on misinformation and misunderstanding, but their zeal and emotion appeal is real” (p. 22).
The USDA’s Handbook repeatedly refers to NAIS opponents’ “misinformation,” but fails to specify any statement of the opponents that is other than completely accurate. Even the USDA’s most comprehensive public-relations campaign can’t sell a bad NAIS system to justly skeptical farmers.  The USDA’s Handbook, like its User Guide and its present NAIS approach generally, repeatedly speaks of needing to “correct” or adjust farmers’ attitudes or beliefs about NAIS.
For all that the USDA may think that farmers function “at the sixth grade level” (Handbook, p. 41), farmers seem to be just too smart to be lured by even the USDA’s most prettily baited NAIS hook.  In January 2007, the USDA conducted NAIS “focus groups” in Sacramento, California, Springfield, Missouri, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  (NAIS Community Outreach bulletin, March 2007, p. 1.)  The participants in the “focus groups” were all livestock producers.  The purpose of the “focus groups” was to gauge farmers’ responses to elements of the unified USDA NAIS public-relations campaign, particularly, the new NAIS promotional brochures and the USDA-imposed “key messages” for promoting NAIS.  These farmers thus received only the USDA pro-NAIS messages and no “opposition” information.  By the USDA’s own admission, these farmers, even after intensive exposure to the USDA’s well orchestrated campaign, would not accept premises registration.  The USDA’s “key findings” about the attitudes of the focus-group farmers after they had received the USDA’s (and only the USDA’s) side of the NAIS story are: 
“Respondents view NAIS as unwanted government intervention.” 
“Current NAIS messaging and brochures will not necessarily motivate producers to register premises.”So, after several years and multiple millions of dollars’ worth of pro-NAIS propaganda, farmers still want no part of NAIS.  Perhaps the USDA should begin to entertain the notion that farmers might not be so “misinformed” after all.  Maybe farmers are simply justifiably mistrustful of a government agency that insists on treating the very people it is supposed to serve like children.

(I am sorry that I can not give attribution.)

http://www.familyfarmdefenders.org/index.php/MadCow/PublicCitizenReleasesResultsOfFreedomOfInformationActFOIARequestAboutMadCow

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the Portland-based company recalled the food because it may be “adulterated” due to inadequate inspection, verification and documentation of processing activities.
Stan Painter, chairman of the USDA Meat Inspectors Union fears legal action and serious public disfavor for his 600,000 member inspection confederation. All of the major US recalls that have forced business truncation contracted with USDA to assure safe food processing. As more and more food processing under USDA enforcement fails the basic safety inspection standards, Painter has not issued a statement concerning the increased appearance of negligence.
After 94 recalls of USDA inspected product in just over a year the once trusted USDA Union Meat Inspection process has proven not to be a safety net for business owners, but a historical process required by federal law that is riddled with flawed procedures.
Ninety-four meat recalls just this year and the government is cracking down on the little guy?

Senate Hearings
http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/pdf/109hrg/99848.pdf
Hearing where Stan Painter is blown off
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/RBI_Transcripts_101006.pdf
“Evidence of Weak Meat Inspection Program Found in Nearly a Thousand Violations of
Mad Cow Rules at Slaughter Plants,” Public Citizen, August 18, 2005,
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2024
Shielding the Giant: USDA’s ‘Don’t Look, Don’t Know’ Policy
http://www.whistleblower.org/sites/default/files/Shielding_the_Giant_Final_PDF.pdf
Short Excerpt:

Testimony Of Stanley Painter, Chairman
National Joint Council of Food Inspection Local Unions,
American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO
Before
Domestic Policy Subcommittee
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Good afternoon Chairman Kucinich, Ranking Member Issa and members of the subcommittee.
My name is Stan Painter and I am the chairman of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection…..
….. We are trained to enforce the various laws and regulations under FSIS jurisdiction. When we see a violation, we are trained to document and write non-compliance reports. In practice, however, that does not always occur. As I mentioned earlier in my testimony, we have had a problem with the way HACCP was implemented at FSIS:
in the late 1990’s and continues to be enforced. HACCP was adopted in response to the Jack-in-the-Box E.coli 0157:H7 outbreak in 1993. While HACCP was billed as an attempt to introduce science into meat and poultry inspection system, it also shifted the responsibility for food safety over to the companies.
While I agree that companies must be responsible for the products they put into commerce, it frustrates me and many of my members when we are told by our supervisors to “let the system work” when we see violations of FSIS regulations and we are instructed not to write non-compliance reports in order to give companies the chance to fix the problems on their own. Sometimes even if we write non-compliance reports, some of the larger companies use their political muscle to get those overturned at the agency level or by going to their congressional delegation to get the inspection staff to back off. So, the agency’s databases may not contain accurate information about the compliance history of meat and poultry plants because of pressure being applied not to write them up for violations.
…Employee Intimidation
ome of my members have been intimidated by agency management in the past when they came forward and tried to enforce agency regulations and policies. I will give you a personal example. In response to the December 23, 2003 discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a cow in Washington State, FSIS issued a series of interim final rules in January 2004 to enhance the safety of the beef supply. Among these new regulations included a ban on meat from downed animals from entering the food supply and the removal of specified risk materials (SRMs) from slaughtered cattle over the age of 30 months before the meat from these animals could be processed and enter into commerce. In December 2004, I began to receive reports that the new SRM regulations were not being uniformly enforced. I wrote a letter to the Assistant FSIS Administrator for Field Operations at the time conveying to him what I had heard.
On December 23, 2004, I was paid a visit at my home in Alabama by an FSIS official who was dispatched from the Atlanta regional office to convince me to drop the issue. I told him that I would not. Then, the agency summoned me to come here to Washington, DC where agency officials subjected me to several hours of interrogation including wanting me to identify which of my members were blowing the whistle on the SRM removal violations. I refused to do so.
I was then placed on disciplinary investigation status. The agency even contacted the USDA Office of Inspector General to explore criminal charges being filed against me. Those charges were never filed. Because all of this was occurring during the time that USDA was trying to re- open beef trade with Japan, I found out that the disciplinary investigation and the possible criminal investigation into my allegations were the subject of a posting on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Japan. Both my union AFGE and the consumer group Public Citizen filed separate Freedom of Information Act requests in December 2004 for any non-compliance records in the FSIS data base that would support my allegations.
It was not until August 2005 that over 1000 non-compliance reports – weighing some 16 pounds — were turned over to both AFGE and Public Citizen that proved that what my members were telling me was correct – that some beef slaughter facilities were not complying with the SRM removal regulations. 1 Coincidentally, on the same day that those records were released, I received written notification from the agency that they were dropping their disciplinary investigation into my actions – some eight months after their “investigation” began
…. While I was completely exonerated in this incident, it has caused a chilling effect on others within my bargaining unit to come forward and stand up when agency management is wrong…..