The Bush administration on Thursday urged a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit filed by a group of Amish (and one Pentecostal) farmers in Michigan claiming RFID chips required on cattle "are a mark of the beast." The plaintiffs are all members of the Arlington, Virginia based "Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund." They are claiming that Michigan regulations requiring them to use radio frequency identification devices on their cattle "constitutes some form of a 'mark of the beast' and/or represents an infringement of their 'dominion over cattle and all living things' in violation of their fundamental religious beliefs," according to the suit filed in September against the U.S. and Michigan Departments of Agriculture in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The USDA responded by saying that the Federal RFID tagging program is voluntary and that the lawsuit should be directed at Michigan, which made RFID tagging mandatory last year.
The farmers then contend that the program is a USDA mandate because the Michigan law was adapted last year as part of a multi-million dollar, federally backed grant program to help eradicate livestock disease.
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