Thank you for putting forth a common sense approach to a complicated matter that is in front of the Hampshire breeder and potentially the CPS breeds. Breed purity is important to all of us that want to make breeding hogs better and knowing we can trust the pedigrees helps us all.
Since you made the offer to provide additional insight, i have a few more questions. In a small breed or population of “pure” animals, is it not possible to have a line of truly purebred animals that have been bred and selected in very closed genetic lines which are isolated from what you call a genetic bottleneck where popular genetics have been selected and constitute a majority of the breed genetics; to have that “pure” population to then fall out of deemed averages of the norm of the breed? And if so, would those animals be considered by your proposed test or the NSR test to be “not pure”?
Second question. Is your point to establish a line in the sand where the population has their accepted genetic make-up known and from that point forward to do genetic checks against their parent? If so, then why would we not be just pick a date and time and say, “Today, the breed is pure. All pigs hereafter need to match their parents; sires and dams”. Would that serve the same purpose? Would weeding out 5 to 10% of our breed make our genetic base stronger or weaken and would it really make it more pure or simply narrow our genetic base even more?
I know these are simple questions for you and I look forward to your great answers that would help us understand how to go forward. Thank you again.
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