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September 4, 2007

Dear TWHBEA members,

I am writing to you to address some of your current concerns about the new registration process that was implemented this year using DNA as the parentage verification method instead of blood typing. 

I am not writing this as Nancy Lynn Greene, the new Registrar of the Association, but as Nancy Lynn Beech, whom many of you had worked with over the years in the breeding barns.  Having been out of the “loop” the past few years, it has taken me a while to digest some of the new requirements for registration.  While I may not personally agree with the way the change has been communicated and implemented, I want to make the remainder of the transition as painless as possible, because I can relate to the frustration you are feeling.

I remember very well when blood typing was first introduced.  While I agreed with the concept of parentage verification and what it would mean for the future integrity of our breed, I let my opinion be heard about having to blood type a whole herd of mares at one time.  It was expensive, and it was inconvenient.  The only saving point at the time was that there was a good market for our yearlings, and I knew we recoup the expense in the long run.

Now, fast forward to 2007, and most people can barely give their horses away, and yet, you are asked to spend another $25 on horses that are already registered.  I admit that on the surface that this is insulting to many horse owners, but I have tried to separate the market issue and the registration process, and ask that you do also.

The market is what it is.  This industry has a greater supply than demand.  We can debate endlessly on why the demand is decreased, and I will save that discussion for another time.  I do believe it is related to many factors including 1) breeding too many horses, especially those without desirable traits, 2) concerns over USDA enforcement and the future of the padded show horse (which has historically driven the dollar value of the market), and 3) the economy in general - as someone told me during the Celebration, when it comes down to feeding his family or feeding horses, the family is going to win out every time.

I realize it is difficult, but I am asking you to put the sales aspect aside and focus on the registration process.  As an Association, we are way behind.  Other breeds have been making the move to DNA technology over the past several years, but we did not do our homework and keep the pace.  Who is to blame, you ask?  Well, I was Vice-President of the Breeders’ Committee at one time, so I will take partial responsibility.  My immediate predecessor had devoted countless hours to negotiating a new blood typing contract, so parentage verification was the last thing on my mind.  My interest has always tracking pedigrees to performance, and being able to predict which bloodlines cross best, so that is the area where I focused my research.  What did or did not happen in the way of benchmarking with other associations since that time really doesn’t matter now, and I am not going to cast blame on any individual.

Could we have had a different implementation process?   Yes, but at some point, there needed to be a population of horses that had both blood type and DNA recorded.  My personal proposal, and others have concurred, would have been to blood type an additional two to three foal crops, but record both a blood type and a DNA profile.  Then, parents could have had their DNA recorded by only submitting a hair sample and matching it to the DNA profile of the foal already registered.  This would have been easier to introduce, as the procedural change would not have been so drastic, but it would have cost more in the long run, because owners that cannot pull their own blood would have had to continue paying veterinarians to blood type their foals.  This process, however, would have prevented the current backlog that we are working through.

In the end, we (as an Association) did what we always seem to do and that is let our own personal agendas take precedence over developing long term objectives for the Association.  There is no going back, but part of my coming to work at the Association at this time is to try to change that mentality going forward.  That being said let us turn our focus back to the current registration process as it involves DNA.  I hope that by printing the responses to some of my most frequently asked questions, it will give everyone a better understanding of what is required and why there is such a current backlog.  Last week, I apologized to someone for the delay, and he told me it was like apologizing for setting him on fire – what is done is done.  Well, I think that is an extreme analogy, but the registry staff is 100% committed to fighting the fire and prevent any new ones from erupting.

• Do I need to convert all of my horses at once?
• No.  Only convert horses that have foals with pending registrations or horses that will have foals soon.
• The lab’s original understanding is that we would only submit conversion requests as foals needed to be registered.  They have spent countless hours processing requests that were not immediately needed, because you were incorrectly given the direction to go ahead and submit your requests at once. 
• This has caused much of the current backlog.
• If the mare/stallion will not have future foals, do not convert them at all.
• Do not convert any geldings.
• Why has my foal’s hair sample been on hold for so long?
• This occurs when the sire or dam does not have a DNA profile.
• At the beginning of the season, the staff simply notified new foal owners that the parents needed converting by way of a memo at the bottom of the Order Acknowledgement.
• Now, we are directly contacting the stallion/mare owner directly by initiating a conversion ourselves when a foal application is received.
• It is taking time to work through the foals that are pending for this reason, and the lab is assisting in this manual effort.
• We have also begun to speed up the process of sending blood kits for foals that have parents who cannot be converted.  These foals will have both a blood type and DNA profile on record, and will be eligible for future breeding.
• Why are blood samples needed for some conversions and not for others?
• When the process started, we notified you that many samples from the Texas laboratory had been lost or damaged, but the Kentucky lab continued to try to use the ones they had.
• We have been dissatisfied with the results from parentage verification of foals that had parents with DNA types directly converted from Texas samples (too many exclusions), therefore we made the decision last week to make an additional blood sample mandatory for all horses that were originally typed in Texas or California. 
• Some conversions from Kentucky blood types may also require additional hair or blood, but this has been a very small percentage of the total.
• Why can’t we just send hair for the sire or the dam?
• In some instances, the lab can make a partial profile from the original sample.  In those cases, we have requested a hair sample to complete.  The lab compares the DNA markers they obtained from the original blood against the DNA from the hair, verifies that it is the same, and then records the remaining markers from the hair sample.
• In most instances when the lab cannot use the original sample, new blood is requested.  We request blood, because it contains both type and DNA.  Up until this point, only blood type was recorded.  The lab first types the blood from the new sample to verify it is the same horse and then records the DNA markers.
• This is not about trusting or distrusting any particular owner.  This is about maintaining integrity in a scientific environment.  The lab must be able to compare apples to apples, and not apples to oranges.
• Can this new procedure save time/money?
• Absolutely.  As I said before, having to retype a horse that is already registered is initially insulting, but when it came time to do my own, I was glad that I was pulling blood on my eleven year-old broodmare that is fairly easy to catch versus her two-month old foal that was bouncing off the walls of the barn.  Fortunately, I have two vets in the family, so I don’t have to pay for blood pulling, but it certainly saved time.
• It is a faster lab process to parentage verify through DNA than it is by blood, so in the future, registration certificates should have a quicker turnaround than they did with blood typing.
• In regards to financial savings, TWHBEA^SM is able to offer the DNA kit for $10 less than the blood typing kit.
• Other financial savings over time will be that the DNA kits will not require any special postage.  It has not been a requirement to overnight blood samples, but many have felt safe doing so to preserve the blood.  This has been true especially in the hotter months.  This will not be necessary with hair.
• Many customers have reported that they will be able to pull hair samples when they previously needed a veterinarian to pull blood.  For many years, TWHBEA has allowed for customers to pull their own blood, but a large percentage did not feel comfortable doing so.
• With blood typing becoming outdated technology, we could be faced with increasing lab fees for that type of testing, which is one of the reasons other registries have already made the transition.
• Is this just a scheme to make money for TWHBEA?
• Absolutely not.  This initiative has been costly to the Association.
• The confusion alone regarding the requirements has delayed many people in submitting their registration applications.
• The Association has absorbed the costs for thousands of blood kits for the horses that were typed in Texas or California. 
• If we had continued to parentage verify by blood for another year or so, all registrations would have required blood, but with this process, some customers have been able to go directly to hair and realize immediate cost savings.
• The Association has passed its savings on parentage verification testing to the members by reducing the cost of the kit from $50 to $40.

If you have additional questions, I encourage you to contact me by phone at 931.359.0583 or by email at ngreene@twhbea.com.  I have studied this situation from every angle, and everyone in this office will tell you that I have tried to find a way to back up and regroup.  After careful consideration, however, it is my opinion that it does not make business sense for the Association or the membership to go back to blood typing, even for a short period.   I challenge each of you to look at the $25 conversion fee not as an added expense for your existing horses, but as an investment to reduce future fees for your foals yet to come.

Sincerely,

Nancy Lynn Beech Greene