Paul Miller served as the chairperson of the meeting. He started the meeting by asking everyone to introduce themselves. According to the Council's Bylaws, voting members were designated as follows:

The first action of the meeting was the approval of the previous meeting's minutes. They were approved with no revisions.

Texas DHI Membership. Mike Tomaszewski gave a description of the Texas DHIA and expressed their desire to become a member of the Council. After a brief discussion, a motion was made and seconded to accept the application of Texas DHI into the Council. The motion carried unanimously. This brings the number of DHI organizations represented to four (California, National DHI, Texas, and Wisconsin). Dairy records service providers elect three directors using a weighted voting procedure. Each member's vote is weighted by the number of records they submitted for genetic evaluation during the prior year.

Quality Certification for Dairy Goat records. The Council had recently worked on a quality certification service for dairy records. This prompted the American Dairy Goat Association (ADGA) to discuss the need for quality certification of goat records for USDA-AIPL genetic evaluations. Sandy Hank made a presentation on behalf of the ADGA.. She explained that the development of uniform standards for field service, lab tests and data processing should be similar to what the Council had established for the cows. Since much of the groundwork has already been covered by the Council, development of specific guidelines for goats would be straightforward. Sandy asked the Council if it had any interest in becoming involved with goats.

Duane Norman supported Sandy's comments. He said that AIPL needs to have a quality certification service for goats. Michael Rector, Quality Certification Services, stated that QCS would be interested in doing the do the work. A question was raised regarding payment for goat quality certification and the group indicated that payment issues would be up to QCS and ADGA.

It was suggested that the Council not become directly involved but rather that the American Dairy Goat Association (and the American Goat Society, which was not represented) should work directly with AIPL. Further recommendation included 1) that a separate Memorandum of Understanding with AIPL be established; 2) that Quality Certification Services provide certification of records; and 3) that Quality Certification Services establish a reasonable price structure, overlapping with the Dairy Certification wherever possible to conserve costs.

Following further discussion, a motion was made by Pete Giacomini and seconded by Dale Eade stating:

The Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding recommends that the dairy goat industry create a Memorandum of Understanding with AIPL for the dairy goat genetic evaluation program, and that the dairy goat industry contract for quality certification under a separate basis from dairy cattle, also that the Council supports Quality Certification Services doing goat quality certification at their discretion. The motion passed unanimously.

Audit Report - Quality Certification for Dairy Cattle records. The QCS report was given by Michael Rector. He presented the material on field service, lab, meter center, and processing center quality certification as summarized in the CDCB book. Progress is being made in completing the first round of audits. A seventh organization has contacted QCS about possible certification audits for establishment as a dairy records processing center.

An Audit Review Committee report was also given. Highlights of the recommendations from the committee's 10-18-2000 meeting included continued support for annual on-site field service audits and several minor modifications such as requiring that lists be kept of herds with out of range percent milk shipped but no requirement for recording explanations. Several other wording changes were made and it was clarified that labs are required to actually run samples during the audit. Bill VerBoort was elected chair of the committee.

A motion was made and seconded to accept the Audit Review Committee's recommendations and require that, in the future, adequate notice must be given before accepting recommendations for changes. The motion passed unanimously.

Gordon Doak asked if the QCS reports should continue to be sent to the Council chair or if they should be sent to a single location on behalf of the Council. The group felt that no action was necessary and that the reports should continue to be sent to whoever is the current Council chair.

Pete Giacomini made a statement that he felt that Quality Certification is in the best shape it has ever been in and that he appreciates Michael Rector's work and hopes Michael can make it through the initial catch up in the work load and that possibly hiring a second person may not be necessary.

American ID. In the absence of Steve Kerr, Tom Lawlor gave the update on American ID. There was a notice in the Federal Register to make the American ID an official identification program. Subsequently, the Council sent APHIS a letter of support. Feedback from several state veterinarians recommended that state of origin be included in the American ID number.

A meeting of several Council members was held on October 5th in conjunction with Expo. The primary topic was how best to handle the suggestion of the state vets. Rather than expand the length of the American ID, a more practical solution is to include a two character state of origin code on the ID tag.

Therefore, the American ID will continue to be a three letter country code and a 12 digit (alphanumeric) identification. Handling of state code will be added to the Tag Printing Requirements of the American ID proposal. The most recent draft of the American Identification Number System by John F. Weimers, National Animal Identification Director and Mitch Essey, National Animal Identification Coordinator was distributed. Paul Miller asked that a copy of the latest changes be e-mailed to the group. Several issues were identified that could prevent the American ID system from offering significant benefits, e.g., check digit wearing off of metal ear tags and problems with the issuance of lost tags. No Council resolution was made, but the group was encouraged to forward comments to Dr. Wiemers.

AIPL report. Duane Norman presented the AIPL update report. He stated that Interbull is working to develop international genetic evaluations for Somatic Cell Score and Productive Life. Interbull is also interested in expanding their MACE for type service to other breeds. An improved procedure to calculate Reliability will soon be implemented by Interbull . AIPL has recently spearheaded and made available an International Cow List. Characteristics of the list were reviewed. It was also mentioned that there is interest within different segments of the U.S. dairy industry to review the possibility of making MACE proofs official for more bulls.

The changes in Net Merit were discussed and Duane stated that the problems experienced with the August Productive Life PTAs have been corrected. New correlations will be used in the multi-trait approach for November. AIPL is working with the University of Georgia to improve the Calving Ease genetic evaluation models, including direct and maternal effects.

AIPL has received additional funds from the ARS competitive grants process to hire a post-doc to aid them in their research on reproductive traits. Additionally, AIPL will be adding a new dairy scientist to fill one of the two positions that have been vacated.

AIPL is starting a study that will look at herds with high deviating cows. Also, AIPL is implementing a new 3-digit error code system. The subject of labeling and reporting meters and other practices that do not meet QC requirements was also discussed. Interested parties will review this issue.

Paul Miller notified the group of the recently passed National DHIA resolutions appearing in the Council book. One of the resolutions refers to the QCS program.

Test-Day Patent. Tom Lawlor updated the Council regarding the Cornell test-day model patent. Representatives from the Council met with Richard Cahoon, Cornell technology transfer specialist, on May 31, 2000. No resolution has been reached. Cornell seeks to devise a revenue stream through a licensing fee based on a per unit of semen charge or perhaps through licensing to individual dairy records processing centers.

An informal survey of the four DRPC representatives at the Council meeting showed no interest in purchasing a license. In correspondence with Cornell, NAAB has put forth the reasons why the AI industry would not be willing to pay such a licensing fee, based on 1) no competitive advantage conferred to users, 2) no increased sales volumes. Further, NAAB has asked Cornell to share the additional price they assume dairy producers are willing to pay per unit of semen when sire PTA's are developed using this test-day technology.

Cornell has held firm on its demand for remuneration from the industry, believing that there is an advantage of $.30 per cow per lactation, when the test-day model is used to estimate herd management effects and is used in conjunction with a test-day model for genetic evaluation procedures. Failing the ability to come to a consensus with Cornell on a licensing fee, an offer was made to pay for the costs Cornell had incurred in patenting the technology. This offer too was rejected.

There was considerable discussion of how to maintain ongoing improvement to the US genetic evaluation system in the face of a very broad patent on the use of a Test Day model to account for herd management effects that is held by Cornell University Research Foundation.

In the mean time, USDA-AIPL has put forth a research proposal to Holstein Association and NAAB to make substantial improvements to the model so as to "invent around" the patented technology. Nevertheless, AIPL desires to continue research on the test-day model, since other countries plan test-day models and AIPL does not wish to fall behind on the techniques used to calculate genetic evaluations.

The council raised questions about whether external research funds would be better spent elsewhere, since the correlation between the current PTAs from the Animal Model and the PTAs from the Test-Day Model is very high. It was mentioned several times that the Cornell patent is very broad. In essence, Cornell has patented the DHIA system and all subsequent genetic evaluations. It is the opinion of most geneticists that all of the claims in the Cornell patent were either obvious, not novel or were previously mentioned in published research. It is the opinion of Council members that this patent would be invalidated in court.

The Council believes that USDA needs to pursue a legal course of action against Cornell. The Cornell patent is preventing new USDA-AIPL technology from being implemented for the benefit of the US dairy industry and subsequently US consumers. The US dairy industry should not be held hostage by a poorly written patent which never should have been issued. Since, the USDA technology transfer office is reluctant to get involved, the Council members believe that we should work collectively and go directly to the USDA- ARS leadership and inform them of the problem.

Next Meeting. The next meeting of the Council was scheduled to be March 14, 2001 in Nashville TN. This is immediately prior to the NDHI annual meeting. (Editorial note: the meeting date has subsequently been changed to March 15).

Meeting adjourned.

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