To add further confusion to the debate, the New York State Farm Bureau, which is locally represented by the Eric Ooms, a Chatham dairy farmer who serves as the state agency’s vice president, supports the national legislation, though it does so with limitations. “We have to work through the costs and practical issues,” said Ooms of the support.

NAIS is currently a voluntary program, but though legislation introduced in February, the tracking system would become mandatory, requiring farmers to “tag” every animal and keep detailed records of every animal’s movements.

While the “tagging” of farm animals wouldn't be an onerous burden for large “factory" farms, which keep livestock closely confined and can bear the cost more easily thanks to scale, it could pose a problem for smaller farms like those found in Columbia County.

Forgetting the costs of implementing the program, the time-consuming administrative burden of having to inform the government of every movement would be too much for many farms, some locals said.

“There are not enough hours in the day currently for all that farmers have to do to survive. This legislation would make it so that if a farmer decided to move a herd of lambs from one field just up the road to another because the grass is better there for grazing, that farmer would have to fill out paperwork for every one of those lambs,” said Gianni Ortiz, a board member for the Regional Farm and Food Project.

Ortiz said the cost of implementing the program could run as high as $10,000 for a small farm, with fees associated with purchasing the tags ($1.50 to $3 per tag), a tag reader ($100 to $200), database subscription (fee estimated at $500 to $1,000), and other incidental costs.

Mike Scannell, a Stuyvesant farmer, said the cost could be as much as $63.62 per cow for a small farmer, while the economies of scale would reduce that cost to only $6.95 per cow for a large operation.

Neither Scannell nor Ortiz believe the tracking system will make the country’s food supply safer.

“The costs and invasiveness and it will do absolutely nothing to make our food supply safer. There are already programs in place in Brazil or Peru and that has nothing to impede massive foot and mouth disease outbreaks,” she said.

“Most if not all of the diseases this is supposed to prevent . . . could all be cured with healthy soil and highly mineralized feed. It’s not a cure. It’s just  control,” added Scannell.

The USDA, however, touts the program as means to increasing safety and returns for farmers. “Choosing to participate ensures you will receive the information you need—when you need it most—to protect your animals and your investment. With timely, accurate information, we can contain a disease outbreak or other animal health event more quickly and more effectively,” the agency’s website contends. “Rapid disease response limits the impact of the outbreak on your operation—and could even stop disease spread before it reaches your animals.”

The agency also contends that the legislation would open all foreign markets to U.S. products—some of which are currently closed because of the lack of regulation—and would increase the overall demand for U.S. farm products, thus increasing the prices that can be charged by farmers.

Larson, who farms in Clermont, said that if implemented properly, the NAIS legislation wouldn’t have too much of an impact. “If they pass the law and give me six months to prepare and then only require the tags on newborns, than that would be acceptable and not much of a problem,” said Larson.

Ooms said the legislation has become necessary at this time. “If we have some kind of an outbreak in this country, and we need to trace it . . . it takes months, and I don’t think that is acceptable in this day and age,” Ooms said.

Ooms acknowledged the cost and time aspects of the legislation but added that is an issue that would have to be addressed before implementation. An example of addressing it for poultry farmers would be creating one ID for an entire flock of chickens.

Like Larson, Ooms said farmers must be given adequate time to implement the program. In addition, he said that the federal government must implement safeguards about who can access the national database of farm animals and for what purpose.

“If the federal government has a database of all of the animals in the country—where does that put them with a FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request? What would happen if animal rights activists wanted access?”

Scannell said he doesn’t trust the government or anyone else to figure out a way of making it work. "This is about freedom. America. I don't want anyone in my business," he said.