Source: Wired.com

The Bush administration on Thursday urged a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a group of Amish farmers in Michigan claiming RFID chips required on cattle “are a mark of the beast.”

The Amish farmers claim (.pdf) 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 farmers’ lawsuit filed in September in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

In response to the charges, the United States Department of Agriculture wrote (.pdf) Thursday that its RFID tagging program is a voluntary measure to help agricultural officials track bovine and other livestock diseases. The USDA said the lawsuit should be directed at Michigan, which adopted RFID requirements last year.

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