"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

The "Rural Payments agency have a rolling programme of random checks,
which intent to check every farm at least once in five years but more
often for larger farms.

They came here just before FMD and then again last week.

These checks are reckonned by the RPA to take an
average of about three days,

All day Friday and Monday afternoon (two people) for our 500 (?) head

most happen at a couple of hours notice

They phoned us and made an apointment.

and every animal has its eartag checked, plus they go through all your
movement records and will check them against other peoples records.

Most errors were either local mart and/or BCMS

offenders are dairy farmers whose cattle never move. They therefore
barely need tags as dairy farmers herds have more ID than you could
reasonably expect anyway.

All our cows have ear tags, although some are kept safely in the box in
the office where there is less chance of loosing them!!

Dairy farmers tend to be the ones frantically
phoning for replacement tags because an old cow is booked in on to
OTMS
and at slaughter ALL tags have to be absolutely correct.

That's where Denimex come in for my praise, tags at 24 hours notice.
(0800 243 557)

Farmer to farmer deals are possible without proper tags but otherwise
you cannot move animals who are incorrectly tagged.

Are you suggesting that we would move animals without checking their
tags???

;-))


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J B