Eeek new sherif in town!!

Well not really a sheriff per say but our dairy inspector retired and they hired a lady inspector that's 6'5" and looks in every nook and cranny imaginable and ticks you points for every little thing! Not to say that's a bad thing but our neighbor's farm is cleaner inside and out than most people's houses ,they usually score 99-100 on their inspection and she gave them a 92.5. Took 5 pints off for housing a horse in the same barn as the cows and gave them 7 days to get it out. She hasn't been here yet but we spent the day going through our place with a fine tooth comb washing cleaning repainting tidying hoping it meets her approval on the 1st visit because they now charge $150 call fee if it isn't good enough the first time around.

We had one here forty years or so ago who was the cause of Dad quitting. He said he wasn't going to put up with that stuff. This guy would not quit until he found something. He was at a neighbor's and couldn't find a thing. Finally went out and found a cow with a little bit of manure on it and wrote them up for that. He got in hot water finally for condemning equipment and suggesting that they go to his brother's dairy equipment business to replace it.

They sent him to the U.P. and his house burned down not too long after he got there. Coincidence? Most folks didn't think so.

Last time he was here,they sent him as a temp for another inspector. When I saw him drive in,the adrenaline started running and I was ready for a fight. I felt totally let down. All he wanted to do was talk about old times. As if we all had fond memories of him.

Oh SNAP I can remember as a kid when that black car would pull in!!!!!! Man my stomach just took a jump. One farmer had a small operation of like 10 cows and he was a real old coot. Well one day the inspector showed up and started giving him a whole pile of C ....p. This farmer thought it was a good day to retire. KNOCKED the inspector out! When the inspector woke up, the farmer helped him up, gave him a cigar, and said "I quit". This story goes back far enough that the local Agway was still a GLF store!

When I was a kid,Dad would sometimes clean up extra good for the inspector,when he thought he might be coming.I don't ever remember seeing the guy,he must not have come very often,and it was when we were not around the barn.I don't remember ever getting a bad report,though.Dad just would find the paperwork laying on the feed box,and say,the milk inspector came! Mark

Once in a very great while dad would have a problem like that. One time the inspector was intent on finding a problem and I do not know how it got to this but dad finally went out into the freestall barn and threw one scoop of pooh into the milking area and that seemed to send the inspector on to the next farm. I don't ever remember him being failed or shut off. My grandparents kept the milkhouse immaculate.

sounds like a 2 week long GI party getting ready fir an IG inspection.

bass
53superC

Yes I remember when I was in Military School and it was almost two
weeks of getting ready for AGI. Polish clean paint polish somemore
ETC.

I owned and operated a USDA inspected Meat processing plant. Had one inspector that was like that, wore a ring with a certain insignia, I asked him if his conduct represented the teaching of that ring. Never had a problem again.

That's the way I like it too,if I'm home when they arrive I say hello and chit chat for a few minutes than go about my day and leave them to their job. No way do I want to tag along while they're doing the inspection. Anything that needs more attention we get it ready for when they follow up.

(quoted from post at 16:11:30 10/29/16) sounds like a 2 week long GI party getting ready fir an IG inspection.

bass
53superC

Click to expand...

For those of you how did not serve at least in the Army the Annual General Inspection (AGI) was a nightmare. We would spend about 6 weeks preparing for it. No training, no ranges, no field time for about 6 weeks. You cleaned, painted and polished everything including the copper pipes under the sinks in the latrine! And they inspected everything. Training records, equipment, issue clothing, barracks, everything. There was no way to run normal operations and keep thing inspection ready. Was funny but in 77 while on my first tour of Germany and living in the barracks we could have pictures tapped to the inside doors of out wall lockers. Most guys had a few family wife/girlfriend pictures up. Night before the AGI room wall locker inspection I cut out pictures of cows from Hoards Dairyman Magazine (dad sent me a subscription) and had as many as I could fit in there. I was in a 4 man room. The inspecting office came in, full Col, and came to me first. He looked over my Class A uniform and found no deficiencies then stepped over to my wall locker. He look at one door then the other, turned and walked out of our room. We were the only room in the battalion that had no deficiencies for the inspection! My room mates wouldn't let me pay for a beer for a long time after that! Was pretty funny!

They finally realized the stupidity of a scheduled AGI and went to unannounced. Started with a 3AM alert that was graded as part of the inspection. It also, 1st day included PT test. No unit, Army wide passed first time through in a 3 year time period. So finally someone realized that the IG standards were ridiculous and they did away with the AGI. What they went to was a BN Cmd inspection every 3 months and one of those a year was conducted by BDE. All this came about in the mid 80's. They also came up with standards that allowed you to stay at least close to inspection ready.

Rick

He would always find one thing to write up at our place. Very seldom more than one, but never a clean slate. I never did see the guy, we would just find the sheet in the milk house.

New inspectors are always a bit tougher to please , at least at first. I have been milking a long time , 36 years , and I have seen 5 different inspectors come and go . There is always some thing on a dairy farm that could be improved , and the rules just keep getting more and more restrictive . New policies being put in place like 'Pro-action " , and "animal care assessment" being added to our Grade A requirements , will only make things tougher again. We can either conform to the new rules or get out, no middle ground. Many farmers are quitting just because the BS and new paper work that comes with it is more than they are will to take. Best of luck with this Amazon , 6'5", bet you won't get too lippy ,lol.

We had them on the ship about every 6
months. Called Captain's Inspections.
Clean, paint, polish Everything for two
weeks prior to the inspection.
I used to wonder why we had to have them
since the ship never looked that good
normally. Then it dawned on me that it took
a biannual cleaning like that to keep the
ship looking mostly squared away for another
6 months.

Haha no I certainly won't! There were a lot of people afraid of pro action but the more we hear about it it's not going to be that bad. There are a few smaller old tie barns still in operation not too far from here and they were basically told that there's no way the dimensions will allow for comfortable stall widths and lengths and even if they we're they would have to add a loafing area to let them exercise a few hours a day. They will have to in the next few years decide to either build a new facility or exit the industry. Taking on that kind of undertaking without interested and capable successors to take on the new debt for the long term will likely see some of them decide to sell.

As a Battalion Motor Sgt. I hated the AGI inspection. I had HHQ,A,B,C companies and one detachment.Had to drive to three of them. The other one I had
to catch a chopper to. Made sure all vehicles were lined up properly. Washed and cleaned shafts polished.Got gigged one time for bolts being dumped
into the bin. Not stacked in order. One jeep had dirty tires.

....and that's mostly what the 'new' regulations are about... helping some more folks 'exit' the industry by making the decision to stay to utterly miserable that they just decide to quit. Not one ounce of this nonsense has done anything to improve the quality of the milk produced OR the welfare of the animals. All it does is swamp small farms in useless paperwork and have them focus on finding ways to cover their tracks for the validators . All of this instead of focusing on actually producing quality milk. The whole thing is a sham to run small farms out of business because it is by definition easier for a larger farm to deal with this wasted time because it's a smaller component to the overall picture for them than it is for a small farm.

Rod

Have you met the new inspector yet? Rumor mills tend to exaggerate the facts more each time a story is retold. You may find the inspector is more reasonable and fair than you expect. Plus a good horror story that scares everyone into cleaning up their act really well before the inspector arrives can make life easier for both the farmer and the inspector.

Sometimes rumors are very true. Prior to the last ones arrival, we heard that she was the bxxxch from McCleod county. She certainly lived up to that. Although after I asked her State boss, Bill Coleman, "why was she sitting in her car for 1 1/2 hours in the local parking lot, reading the MPLS paper?", she was more tolerable after that. I told Coleman that our every other day milk sample checks by the creamery did more for milk quality than the twice a year Grade A inspections, but he said, "I cant agree with that". I could write a book about the ridiculous rules they come up with- just like asking a cop re trucking/tiedown regs.

That is true too, every time some video makes the news of how 1 worker on 1 farm out of 1000's was mistreating an animal it throws the industry into a tailspin (no pun intended) than the rest of us are forced to deal with the new regulations to try to calm and reassure the public.We after all in the end do work for the public and their perception of how food is produced and animals are treated is important but the media can take 1 case of a person caught on tape doing something very wrong than we all have to suffer for it.

I haven't met her as of yet but I'm sure she'll turn out to be alrigh. After hearing our extremely extra clean neighbors didn't fair out nearly as well as usual it made me second guess our own inspection readiness lol

The last inspection I had in the Navy was a maintenance inspection. The inspector was bound and determined to ding me somehow. It came down to the oily rag disposal bin, which we didn't have. He asked where it was, I looked him in the eye, pointed at the trash can, and said "right there." My chief about lost it. As soon as he walked out of the shop, Chief calls all the engineering spaces, telling them to grab some red paint and start painting trash cans. I didn't hear a peep about the incident from above though.

And in many of those cases, it's the animal rights people on both sides of the camera!