Sir, – Oh how I sympathise with John Scott, in his Farmer's View column in last week's issue.

At least he had warning that they were coming. On the last Monday in February, before 10am, two inspectors from RPID arrived with me unannounced and wanted to check all the cattle ear tags and passports.

We were in the middle of lambing and and dealing with the extra hassle of our triplet bearing ewes succumbing to 'twin lamb' disease. I was curt, but reasonably polite and explained that this was arguably the busiest day they could have chosen and asked why they hadn't made an appointment. They replied that they don't do appointments.

I refused their request and after a phone call to HQ they agreed to check all the paperwork that day and return on the Wednesday to check the tags. I suggested we run all the housed young stock through the crush but as the cows out on the hill were only a couple of weeks from calving I was not prepared to bring them in and risk injury.

They reluctantly agreed and checked the cow's tags at their feed hecks. A few tags were missing, mainly stirks and I was told to replace them and e-mail a copy of the tag invoice to them.

This was duly done, but a few days later I was informed that I had ordered one tag less than was needed. I explained that I had a spare tag for one of the cows that was thought to have lost one last summer but on closer inspection it was there among the hair.

The cow had since lost it and I replaced it with the replacement. But no, this didn't please RPID I had to prove that I had bought a replacement so, believe it or not, I had to send off for a replacement I didn't need.

During another phone call to confirm that all was well I asked what I should do with this third tag as during the check in polite conversation it was mentioned that it was against the rules to keep spare tags, I presume for security reasons.

'Should I give the cow a third tag or ...?' – after a long pause the inspector replied 'just keep it for a spare', 'but a couple of weeks ago you told me ... oh just forget it and I hung up!'

This, sir, is bureaucracy gone mad.

(Name and address supplied)