Executive Summary from the Interbull Steering Committee

The Interbull Steering Committee held a web-phone conference on June 4, 2013, and it was decided to provide additional information on the upcoming GMACE implementation through this summary.

The Interbull Centre and Peter Sullivan have actively addressed questions about the GMACE test run results brought up by the participating countries in order to ensure confidence on the results.
Given that the new Interbull service contracts have not been signed yet, that the service users need more time to adapt national evaluation systems to receive/include GMACE results and that the communication about GMACE results properties and usage to the industry is still a work in progress, the SC has decided that the August 2013 GMACE run will be considered an implementation run, instead of a regular routine run. The unique properties of this August 2013 GMACE implementation run are:
- Publication of results in the respective national scales is optional. Those organizations who decide to publish the August 2013 GMACE results must also publish the following message: “The August 2013 GMACE run is an IMPLEMENTATION RUN and its results are meant to get breeders familiarized with the GMACE estimates. As any novel methodology, fine tuning in national and international procedures may occur in the following runs.”
- There is no service fee associated to it. This is a modification in relation to the executive summary published on May 17, 2013 (given the December 2013 is intended to be the first GMACE routine run, the 2013 fees related to GMACE services will be equivalent to 1/3 of the total fee or 11.7% of the MACE-production traits fee).
- All evaluation centers contributing national GEBVs for GMACE are encouraged to submit the data at the same deadline as for national EBVs (July 23, 2013), but due to requests received, GEBVs may be sent to the Interbull Centre at the latest on July 30, at 17:00 CET, provided that all pedigrees are uploaded no later than July 23. GEBVs of bulls with no pedigree uploaded into IDEA by July 23, will not be included in the GMACE run.
- Only official GEBVs of AI-bulls will be distributed at the August run.
Information on GMACE methodology has been made available at https://wiki.interbull.org/public/GMACE_extension_materials?action=print.
National genetic evaluation centers are requested to inform the Interbull Centre no later than July 1^st, 2013, if they are planning to participate with GEBVs in the August 2013 GMACE implementation run.
Time will be allocated at the business meeting in Nantes for further discussions about GMACE implementation.
Clarification about the “Guidelines for minimum requirements for advertising genetic merit of dairy animals” approved by the Steering Committee:
- Only organizations that supply GEBVs for GMACE will be charged with service fees.
- All Interbull service users, both supplying only EBVs for MACE and supplying EBVs for MACE plus GEBVs for GMACE, should make publicly available the genetic merits from both MACE and GMACE in their respective scales during routine runs.