Introducing the Oregon Consumers and Farmers Association – OCFA

The time to prepare in Oregon is NOW! Let’s not wait until something like what is happening in Wisconsin happens to us.

To this end, the Oregon Consumers and Farmers Association was born.

OCFA’s Mission

Oregon Consumers and Farmers Association is a nonprofit lobbying group dedicated to promoting and preserving privacy and property rights of farmers and homesteaders as well as the right to unrestricted and unregulated direct trade with the consumers who love their products.

It would seem obvious that we should be able to feed ourselves and our families as we wish. After all, we have the right to free speech, to choose our religion and to make any number of decisions throughout the day without governmental intervention. Owning livestock as private property has been an accepted commonlaw right since the dawn of civilization. Our forefathers could not imagine the day when bureaucrats would dictate whether or not we could purchase a bottle of milk from our neighbor, so they did not enumerate it as a right in the Constitution. Local food was the only food in their time; denying food trade among individuals would have resulted in starvation! In addition to food rights, we are concerned with privacy concerns and land rights, including zoning and eminent domain.

National Animal Identification System
The simple explanation: NAIS is the Federal Government’s plan to register EVERY place livestock is kept. The definition of livestock is very broad and includes many animals that will never enter the public food supply that are kept by hobbyists or homesteaders. If you have horses for riding or chickens for show, you will have to comply. You will have to register your “premises” (home), tag every single one of your livestock with government approved RFID tags (or injected microchips), report all animal “movements” (such as births, deaths, lost tags, trips to the fair or a vet, etc) within 24 hours of their occurance and submit to warrantless searches of your property. If you are found not to be in compliance (including a mistag of one animal or a missing animal), fines are $1,000 per animal per day. It gets significantly more involved than that… and this website will eventually provide more details. However, you should know that BigAg has written special conditions for themselves. YOU will have to tag every chicken. THEY will use one tag for a building housing 40,000 chickens. NAIS was dreamed up by industrial agriculture and technology interests to protect THEIR interests, especially exports. It does nothing to protect disease. If National Animal Identification becomes law, only feedlots will survive it!

NAIS by State
Three states have launched mandatory NAIS, with funding from the USDA: Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan. Oregon has been quiet thus far. We are using this time to reach out to our fellow citizens, to educate them and ready them for a battle that may well come to our state, too. We also track other legislative issues, whether local or national, that could affect our freedom in our own homes.

Although the President, Larisa Sparrowhawk, was Secretary of Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association for nearly 4 years before moving west, and although we enjoy fellowship with consumers and farmers associations in other states, OCFA is incorporated as an independent non-profit lobbying mutual benefit association with members.

Go to the OCFA site HERE.

The OCFA site includes the latest information regarding supposed “food safety” legislation, NAIS in Wisconsin,  national raw dairy news, and a soon to be collection of Oregon farmers’ markets.

Tags: dairy, farmers, farming, food safety, human rights, Legislation, local food production, ocfa, oregon, oregon consumers and farmers association, right to eat, right to farm, Wisconsin