Why Is Tagging Necessary?

As I sit here on this sunny warm winter morning, with a new year before us, I become even more determined to do a bit more, be a bit more, for our family and the business/career we have chosen.

We have dedicated our lives to providing healthy beef choices for you and your family. In doing this we run into a number of road blocks. Not in the methods, which are clean, and create a healthy, clean environment, but those agencies that are set to “monitor/regulate” us.

You see, we have an issue with the “tagging” of our animals. It requires a huge, in my mind, hole to be punched in their ear, and a tag attached. These tags can and do become tangled and ripped out, leaving no choice but to punch another hole. They also want us to tag the newborn calves. This is so dangerous, not for the calf, but for us! And it is all so unneeded.

These animals all look different, even the solid black ones all have a difference, whether it is how much hair, growing which way, the set of the ears, eyes, legs, many things that set them apart. And when you are around these small herds of 15 to 20 cows with calves, you learn who they each are, especially since we have them for many years. So we are at this time in a battle with the “agencies” about this.

I am, in fact, having to do some major tech time in putting together story boards for each animal with pictures and a list, and pictures of calves they had, so that I can “show” the trail. We, of course, have breeder records, but since our inspectors cannot seem to tell the difference between one animal and another we have to have some major tech digital record to show. So be it.

I can tell you now that it seems vastly unfair that we are required to log and document each and every move/action, while the bulk of producers can use any combination of chemicals and such and don’t have to do the same. Why is this do you think? Why shouldn’t we be appraised of what is being done to all the food we are consuming? Whether it is grown/raised or processed.

Steve and Kim Wells, of Wells Family Farms, have been building not only a family, a farm, but also a dream. The need to transition to certified organic comes not only from the standpoint of a healthy planet and animals, but a healthy life.
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