Kennel Club launching "healthy matings" database

I'm not going to comment on this.
in case i nearly get my head bit off again
over another KC thread I made
(some of you can be quite scary you know)
I am Posting it purely on the basis some one here will find it interesting

The Kennel Club is developing a revolutionary new database that will enable people to find a perfect mate for their dog which they hope will help to improve the health of future generations within the breed. The database will be available by the end of the year, and the Mate Select programme within the following twelve months

The Mate Select programme will allow both occasional and regular breeders to assess the impact that a proposed mating will have on the genetic diversity within a breed.

As new health screening tools are developed, these will also be incorporated into Mate Select so that, in future, breeders will be able to select mating pairs which will maximise the chances of producing healthy puppies whilst having the optimum impact on the breed’s genetic diversity.

The Kennel Club wants to ensure that these healthy puppies go on to loving homes and has launched a new Breed Information Centre on its website. This includes a Health Test Results Finder, which records the health test results for any Kennel Club registered dog; an Accredited Breeder application that gives potential owners a list of responsible breeders in their area; and a Find a Breed application to show which breed’s characteristics would best suit their lifestyle.

Nick Blayney, former President of the British Veterinary Association, has spoken about the importance of the new database for dog health. He said: “The Kennel Club has helped develop many DNA tests and has a number of health screening schemes that are run with the British Veterinary Association and this knowledge should be central to any breeding decision. Sometimes though, there is so much information to compute that breeders often don’t know where to start. This database will do the complicated calculations for them, showing them clearly which dogs will make the most suitable match in order to produce healthy puppies.”

Professor Jeff Sampson, Kennel Club Chief Scientific Advisor, said: “The programme will be available for pedigree dogs, because we know their heritage and therefore have more information available for them, but we hope that information about all other dogs will also be fed into this database. At the moment we have frighteningly little information about diseases within crossbred dogs, but this database will help to throw light on this grey area and help us, therefore, to improve the health of pedigrees and crossbreeds alike.”

i think personally I would rather the KC spent the money on ensuring it follows up on the many calls and reports it gets on bad breeders and why it does nothing about them, seeing as its supposed to promote responsible breeding/...

JMO of course.
3 staffies into rescue who are KC reg this month whose breeders arent in the slightest bit interested and what do the KC do when its reported - nothing.

Sounds like a good tool for the better breeders that have health as a high priority. It might do more good if potential puppy buyers could check the dam and sire.

i read a thing about that on the internet.

it sounds like a good idea, but i dont know too much to about the KC to really comment about what they do or dont do... from what Dani said though, sounds like they could spend more time following up with bad breeders...

To be honest, all the Kennel Club has to do to promote healthy breeds is to refuse to register any puppies unless both parents have had all known health tests.
But they wont do this, as it will drastically reduce the amount of money that the KC recieve through puppy registrations....

I agree.

Most of the proposed above is already in place.

Well from British Utonagan Assoc. point of view this is GREAT , we are in the loop hole of DPA with regards health test and our dogs, we cannot utilise the open health checker as our dogs are unrecognised and we cannot access the results of dogs not registered by our Association due to the DPA which when talking to BVA we are trying to get around.... if this is used for cross breeds and unrecognised breeds then it will help greatly our breeders who more times than not are the victims of bad breeders and mis-information....it will also allow us to prove to new puppy owners who is and who isnt ethical ...

YEEE HAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Hoping also the new rules re breeding, microchipping and logging all pups shall be a wonderful step forward for us..

New breeds and pedigree breeds are always victims of unethical breeders however they choose to paint things and I have nothing but praise for the KC with regards open pedigrees, health test results and encouragement of health testing in the breeds, the hard job is getting breeders to comply in my opinion..

At least its something heading in the right direction, rome wasnt built in one day.

Mo

But it need not be a hard job, all the KC has to do is refuse to register any litter that is not fully health tested.

they wont do it though, as that would mean their registrations drastically reduced, and after all the kennel club is a business, and it makes millions a year!

Actually it is a Charity and all its 'profits' are distributed through the KC Charitable Trust. The KC gives grants of thousands of pounds each year to Canine Charities, Breed Rescues and for research into canine health.