You know that weird feeling when the US Senate passes a seemingly routine

spending bill, Joe Biden signs it into law, a government shutdown is averted, but then later you learn that included deep inside of this, again, seemingly innocuous bill, is a provision to track beef cattle.

Specifically, included in this massive spending bill is a

$15 million outlay for the purchase of electronic Erified D tags for cows and

bison. Now, while seemingly random and easy to ignore Congressman Thomas Massey of

Kentucky he doesn't see it that way. Instead after learning about this provision

he issued a warning about how these ear tags might eventually be used to

electronically track livestock across the entire country

in an effort to limit the consumption of beef. Here's specifically how he laid out the threat in a Twitter post.

Hidden in this week's omnibus, lobbyists got got 15 million dollars to implement electronic

tracking of all cattle in the US. No law authorizes this. It will be used by the

green agenda to limit beef production and by the corporate meat oligopoly to dominate small ranchers.

Now there is obviously a lot to unpack here.

The specific provision that he's referring to within the spending bill is this one right here.

It's a short paragraph that's incredibly easy to miss,

especially given the fact that the actual spending bill

is about this thick, but here's what the relevant paragraph says.

Quote, the agreement directs the Department of Agriculture to continue to provide the tag and related infrastructure needed to comply with the federal animal disease traceability rule, including no less than $15 million for electronic identification EID tags and related

infrastructure needed for stakeholders to comply with the proposed rule, use of electronic

identification ear tags as official identification in

cattle and bison should that rule be finalized. Now let's unpack what this

actually means in plain English in order to give you a real sense of what's

...