NAIS premises ID | NAIS animal ID | Contact Your State's Reps

The Virginia Alliance for Potbellied Pigs strongly urges each pig owner to educate themselves on this program being phased in by the United States Department of Agriculture. Links are provided on our site.

It is in your best interest and that of your pig(s) to be as informed as possible and to be proactive in advocating what you feel is in the best interest of you and your animals. We will provide links to contact the appropriate officials including easy access to your state representatives. This is crucial as each state is charged with developing its own implementation plan.

This plan dramatically effects the way we all do business with our animals and has been going through the comment stages. Official working groups have been formed to advocate for their particular species (e.g. horses, llamas ), but no national potbellied pig group has taken the lead in informing the members of our community that this was even happening and how it will affect the non-food chain pigs. Other species working groups such as the camelids have been polling all members of their community and lobbying to grandfather in the microchips already in place (see www.camelidid.org). This is the type of proactive lobbying that needed to be done for our pigs years ago and what we will now try to work out with our state legislatures as they begin to draw up legislation affecting our pigs here in Virginia. This Alliance will do all in its power to get the unbiased facts before the people affected by these sweeping changes and keep them up to date on changes as they happen. We will only pass along what we can verify as absolute fact and not supposition, worst case scenarios or internet myths. Now is the time for you as pig lovers and as citizens of this country to take an active role in participating in the decisions being made.

We welcome your comments and questions. We will do our honest best to go to the most accurate and up to date sources available to answer your questions factually and in a timely manner.

This information linked above comes directly from the USDA information sites and it alone is responsible for the facts presented. Our publishing of the quotes from the USDA in our attempt to explain this program to you as accurately as possible is in no way an endorsement. Please see the www.usda.gov/nais/ for more details.