Colorado youth involved in 4-H and FFA are increasingly being pressured by urgent political forces. Coercion and collusion couched as "education and outreach" are double-teaming property owners into accepting premises registration under the guise of protection against disease.

The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) is a means of acquiring property by default, causing property owners to acquiesce by making them think it is about protection against disease. Brand laws already cover that base.

Few currently understand the meaning of "premises" and how it will negate the legal power of private property. These three definitions make clear the intent:

"Premises" is a physical location that represents a unique and describable geographic entity where activity affecting the health and/or traceability of animals may occur. (APHIS User Guide definition

"Property" is something that is owned or possessed. Property may be real (land), personal, tangible (touchable), or intangible (creative work).

"Private Property" is any and all property owned by or belonging to an individual, group, or corporation.

It is crucial that Colorado's counties draft resolutions opposing this. It is vital that Colorado 4-H and FFA parents and leaders recognize this real danger and stop what amounts to the seizure of property under false pretense.

By Julie K. Smithson, property rights researcher

propertyrights@earthlink.net

www.propertyrightsresearch.org

"The three great rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty, but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave." - George Sutherland, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1921.