Registered animal owners also would be required to identify animals any time these animals leave their premises. For instance, students participating in 4-H projects would have to comply. Livestock owners who take llamas to shows or horses to trail rides would need to notify the authorities. Even entrants in the World Championship Pack-Burro Race would need to inform authorities they are taking their burros to the race, and that these animals "commingled" with other burros.

While the program is not yet mandatory in all states, for now the USDA is counting on market pressures to force farmers and ranchers into compliance. For example a small cattle rancher may need to comply in order to sell animals at a sale barn or a feedlot, or to ship animals across state lines. In fact, the Colorado Cattlemen's Association is taking up the topic of compliance at its annual meeting in Pueblo in June with an "Animal ID Myth Busters Forum."

The fact of the matter is this program really does nothing to prevent or detect disease before there is a problem -- there is no testing or screening. Its sole purpose is to provide a system to track problems such as Mad Cow back to the source within 48 hours. The real aim is to help big farm interests increase foreign markets.

Critics say the program will increase costs to small livestock owners, invade the privacy of farmers and ranchers, violate constitutional rights, and impede individual freedoms.

One rancher friend of mine noted that when Hoof and Mouth Disease struck in England authorities went from farm to farm destroying entire herds that farmers literally spent generations building. Hoof and Mouth is not necessarily fatal to livestock and does not even render meat inedible. Humans reportedly can carry the disease but are not susceptible to it. The threat was purely from a marketing perspective.

Nevertheless, when it was all said and done, the herds were destroyed and some farmers had committed suicide in the wake of their losses.

Registration of farms and animals would make it easier for authorities to carry out such hysteria here in the United States. As my rancher friend says, "Why don't they just tag the farmer while they're at it? How far are we away from that?"

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Sometimes it feels a little like a drug deal when I buy meat products, meeting suppliers in parking lots, fields and other out-of-the-way places to make the transaction. Once I waited in the dark at a warehouse near the railroad tracks in Pueblo to buy a Thanksgiving turkey from one of the local food co-ops.

Some people wonder why I don't just buy my food at the grocery store like everyone else. In my efforts to support local agriculture and buy more nutritious foods, I am willing to go to such lengths to get grass-fed beef, pasture-roaming pork, fresh eggs, organic vegetables, and perhaps the occasional free-range fowl flying just a little under the industrial food complex radar.

For my extra effort I get meats with real flavor, texture and color the likes of which usually cannot be found in a grocery store, including those of the "health food" variety. I trust my dealers to supply me with safe and nutritious foods. I cannot say the same for the big agribusiness, with its factory approach to farming.

When the government finally does require small producers to register their premises and tag every animal they raise, some of them will probably be forced out of business by the costs of registration and compliance. In a nation built on the backs of independent family farmers, it will be a sad day indeed.

Hal Walter raises free-range microchip-free burros in the Wet Mountains near Westcliffe. For more information about the National Animal Identification System, check out www.usda.gov/nais/ and www.stopanimalid.org.