Advocate For What We Love

Hello!  

I am Tonya Liles from Terry.  I live with my husband Brady and 2 kids, Kinley and Remy.  We run a cow/calf operation on Brady's family ranch, L7 Ranch, Inc.  I am a veterinary technician at the Miles City Veterinary Service, mainly helping the sale barn vet over at the Miles City Livestock Commission.  I "play" with cow ears; recording bangs tags, replacing lost ones and reading bangs tattoos. 

I am on the American Farm Bureau Animal Care Committee and recently traveled to Washington D.C. to attend meetings.  Two big issues we discussed in brief were ELD's and CERCLA/animal emissions.  With the deadlines on both these issues approaching soon, these were kind of wait and see topics that everyone was on the same page about.  

We heard a presentation from Dan Kovich of the National Pork Producers Council.  His topic was on regulations regarding gene editing and trying to have these regulations moved from FDA's hands to USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.  Another presentation was given via phone from Katelyn McCullock on cultured meat.  There is a big push to be able to keep our label of "meat" on the real protein and not the lab grown protein.  There was also some discussion on not only educating consumers about agriculture but, also, educating the farmers and ranchers so they are better informed to face public scrutiny.  The committee will have a couple conference calls this summer to continue to discuss these issues and more.  

We did vote on American Farm Bureau policy 13.3.6, which has to do with Brucellosis vaccinations of cattle.  We voted to remove the word "mandatory" so that it leaves the decision up to the state where you reside.  Our discussion on this action pertained to the fact that some states are at low risk for developing Brucellosis and vaccination should not be mandatory.  This recommendation will be sent to the AFBF Resolutions committee at the 2019 Annual Convention for consideration.

The future of agriculture depends on support from our Montana grassroots organization!  Agriculture is Montana's number one industry and we are under attack by activists attempting to shut down production agriculture and our way of life.  We need to continue to advocate for what we love so our little future farmers and ranchers have somewhere to come back to.  We need to continue to push to provide the world with our great home raised products!