T
here are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.
Aldo Leopold

25 August 2006

Making outlaws of us all

From the ASI newsletter:

New Regs for Transporting Hay

Under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, regulations regarding the transporting of hay will go into effect in December. The new rules are designed to protect against serious threats to the food supply. The regulations relate only to transported hay that is destined to be fed to livestock entering the nation's food chain, such as beef and dairy cattle, sheep and goats. All size farms are affected, but those who grow hay exclusively for use in their own livestock operation will see no change in procedures.

The regulations state that specific documentation must be kept by farmers if they sell, barter, give away or otherwise ship hay destined for use as livestock feed off the originating farm. If someone else does the hauling, the responsibility for record keeping shifts to the transporter. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers transporters to be anyone who has possession or control of an article of food for the sole purpose of transporting it by rail, road, water or air. The FDA requires that records concerning animal food be kept for one year. Currently, a standard bill of lading provides most of this information.

2 comments:

Yeoman said...

Goodness. I'm just back from moving cattle and was completely unaware of this, even though I'm afflicted with a second job raising cattle.

This is really absurd. It'll do nothing in real terms to combat terrorism, and effectively gums us up more than the terrorist would.

KGT (aka Cagey) said...

Lovely ain't it?