The meeting was called to order at 8:00 a.m. by Dr. Paul Miller, chair of the Council. The first action was the announcement of the voting members. They were:

The minutes of the last meeting were reviewed. Discussion revolved around how extensive the minutes should be. The general feeling of the group was that the minutes should not be a verbatim record of the meeting nor should it be restricted to an action summary but it should contain enough information to record the substance of a conversation. John Fiscalini recommended that a section of the draft be removed. With this change the minutes were approved (the official minutes of the October 19, 2000 meeting are attached).

Quality Certification for Dairy Cattle records. Mike Rector presented this report. The QCS workload has required the hiring of a second full time position. Future costs to affiliates may need to reflect this added expense. In the interim, work has continued with the help of Gerald Steuernagel. Recent work involved development of a web site to maintain the Sample Unknowns Program and putting together of two DRPC test herds to help with standardization.

It was noted that one of the milk testing laboratories had not converted to the True Protein basis on May 1, 2000. This situation has been corrected and the situation is being reviewed by QCS.

It was recommended that the QCS reports to the Council should be maintained and stored at a single location. Since, Gordon Doak has received all of the past reports, he graciously accepted this responsibility.

Audit Review Committee. The Audit Review Committee held their meeting on the previous day, March 14. Chairman Bill Ver Boort reported on five issues.

The Council approved the acceptance of milk records for the National Dairy Genetic Evaluation Program coming from the Tru-Test Electronic Milk Meters Trials.

American Identification Number System.

Paul Miller updated the Council on the status of the AIN system. The final draft of "Establishing the American Identification Number (AIN) as a National Standard" was in the book for review. The public comment period for the proposal is over. Final approval of the recommendation is on hold until the new Administration is in place.

Members of the Council discussed the relevance of AIN to the recent outbreaks of FMD and the widespread consumer fear of BSE. It was recognized that the AIN system is a voluntary program. However, in order for a national animal identification program to be successful, a standardized numbering system is required. Steve Kerr commented that in addition to standardization, a detailed trace back system is also needed in order to have a program that would help our industry respond rapidly to halt the spread of a disease.

A number of people stated that AIN has not been universally adopted. For example, state vets have not yet accepted it and some DHIAs are still distributing the old state tags (i.e. brucellosis tags). Bill VerBoort said that since the Council believes in identifying as many animals as possible and supports the AIN system we need to show some leadership in having it adopted. Bruce Dokkebakken said we can't require people to change past ID numbers. We should help people to plan for this change by establishing a future start date.

The following motions regarding the American Identification Numbering System were made:

The Council went on record as fully endorsing the current APHIS proposal of "Establishing the American Identification Number (AIN) System as a National Standard".

The Council recommended that all members of the Council require animals to have a unique identification number and that the unique identification system must be the American Identification Numbering System. Required implementation date is January 1, 2003. Animals identified with another unique ID numbering system and enrolled with a member's organization before January 1, 2003 will not need to be reidentified. All other newly enrolled animals will be required to have an American Identification Number.

Steve Kerr was asked to write a press release on American ID. Members of the Council were asked to urge the Secretary of Agriculture to expedite the approval of this recommendation.

Test-Day Patent Status Report.

Tom Lawlor reviewed the past communications with Cornell. The most recent news was that the Canadian Dairy Network will be filling a request with the Canadian Patent Office for reexamination. The European Patent Office has not issued Cornell a patent. The precise reason for the rejection is not known.

Recently, several members of the Council (Gordon Doak, Paul Miller, Ryan Starkenburg and John Clay) went to Beltsville, MD and meet with USDA administrators, legal staff and scientists (Lew Smith, Steve Kappes, Tom Sexton, Howard Silverstein, Mike Ruff and the AIPL staff). Gordon Doak reported on the discussions. USDA may be willing to request a reexamination of the patent. Unlike the previous reexamination in which USDA solicited Cornell to have the patent reexamined, USDA would take this request directly to the Patent Office. It was suggested that influential New Yorkers with ties to Cornell be encouraged to make their feelings known to the Cornell administration and the NY legislature.

The Council recommended the following actions regarding Cornell University's Patent on a "Method of bovine herd management".

• The Council encourages USDA to seek a way to move its latest technology on genetic evaluations into the public sector.
• The Council endorsed USDA's current plan to go directly to the US Patent Office for a reexamination of the Cornell Patent.
• The Council decided that enough time has elapsed without any response from Cornell University that any implied or explicit financial offers are null and void.
• The Council encouraged its members to develop a strategy whereby New York dairy farmers and alumni can inform the Cornell Administration about their analysis and feelings on the Cornell Patent.

NAAB Report.

There was considerable discussion of Congenital Vertebral Malformation (CVM). A DNA based test for this condition is available in Denmark. However, as the developers of the test are applying for a patent, no specific information on the marker (or markers) is being released. The Danes imply that CVM is a simple autosomal recessive. However there is no scientific evidence to support this claim. The information that is available does not point to any clear genetic explanation. A survey of Danish dairy farmers produced results inconsistent with a hypothesis of a simple recessive. Approximately 25% of the test results from U.S. animals are coming back as inconclusive. If a single gene does cause CVM, then these results would indicate that the Danish marker is not very closely linked with the actual gene causing CVM. In the U.S., there has been only six confirmed cases. This number is very low if the trait is a simple recessive and it's carried by a large number of widely-used AI bulls. Possible explanations could include more than one gene causes CVM, there is incomplete penetrance or the field data is unreliable.

Given the current information, the U.S. Holstein industry does not have much confidence in the Danish test. Therefore, a widespread testing program of the U.S. population is not being initiated at this time. In an effort to help resolve this issue, NAAB and Holstein USA will be conducting a research project to determine the mode of inheritance.

Publication of Official Proofs.

Some bulls have more than one source of a genetic evaluation, i.e., a domestic U.S. and a MACE proof. To avoid confusion, the U.S. dairy industry has established a policy for determining a bull's official (published) proof. Recently, a research paper entitled "Improving Prediction of National Evaluations by Use of Data from Other Countries" by Rex Powell, Duane Norman and Georgos Banos showed that the inclusion of multinational data improved the prediction of future domestic evaluations. They reached this conclusion by observing that the 1999 domestic evaluations were better predicted by the bull's 1994 Interbull proof than by his 1994 domestic proof. The same conclusion was true for milk, fat and protein for each of the following countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and the USA.

Tom Lawlor presented a proposal to change the current policy. Under the new proposal, the Interbull MACE proof would be official if a bull has additional daughters outside of the U.S.. This proposal had been previously endorsed by USDA, NAAB and Holstein USA. Since, Mace for Type was just being introduced for the Jersey breed, Neil Smith said that it was too early to evaluate this proposal. He also mentioned that he questions the validity of the requirement of needing75 daughters in 50 herds in the second country before the proof is used. Denny Funk said that he would encourage Interbull to work on female fertility, milking speed and temperament.

The Council then recommended that the Policy on the Publication of Official Proofs be changed to the following:

The Interbull Mace proof will be the official evaluation when it includes both US and foreign daughters. If the Interbull Mace proof contains foreign daughters only, then the Interbull Mace proof will be official if it has a higher reliability than the domestic evaluation. In all other cases, the domestic evaluation will be official.

AIPL Report. Duane Norman previewed the scientific reports that will be presented at this summer's American Dairy Science Association's meetings in Indianapolis. Duane informed the group that Interbull evaluations for SCS and Jersey type will be available in May.

Gordon Doak outlined a strategy to obtain increased funding for AIPL. There have been no increases in funding since 1995. Inflation, salary increases and increasing external costs have meant a loss of staff and scientists. Steve Kerr, Gordon Doak and Paul Miller are planning to meet with Government officials in late March. Steve Kerr credited Gordon with taking the lead on this issue. He noted that the scheduling of meetings has been arranged by NAAB's Washington based consultant. It's very important to have someone who knows the system and can arrange to open doors. He encouraged the Council to consider hiring its own consultant. Supporting ARS research that is beneficial to the dairy industry will be increasingly important with the upcoming budget cuts. It was noted that the topics "How to lobby for AIPL support" and the "AIPL Priority List" should be put on the Fall agenda.

The Council expressed their support of AIPL and will seek additional funding to maintain their program at its current level of excellence as well as an expansion into the research of the genetic components of both male and female fertility.

PDCA report. Under the coordination of Ted Halbach and George Shook, the six breeds met in Milwaukee to discuss any economic advantages in greater sharing of resources. They discussed joint processing and will look at a feasibility study. Results are expected in about six months, but the costs of amalgamation can not be ignored.

Election of Directors and Officers. The current slate of Directors were reelected. Paul Miller was elected Chair and Tom Lawlor was elected vice-Chair. Tom will also assume the duties of Secretary and Treasurer.

Next Meeting. The next meeting of the Council will be a noon to noon meeting on October 30-31, 2001 in Reno, NV.

Respectfully Submitted,
Tom Lawlor, Secretary

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