Minutes of the joint meeting of the Board and the Executive Committee of the WBFSH
Date & Venue: 12.07.2004, Verden
Present: Board – Jan Pedersen, Paul Hubert, Rik van Miert, J.E.M. van Campen
Executive Committee – Klaus Miesner, Rudy Eerdekens, Karina Christiansen, Xavier Guibert, Dermot Ryan, Johan Knaap.
Interstallion group – Jan Philipsson, Erwin Koenen (item 2.h.)
Apologies: Breido Graf Zu Rantzau, Jim Flanagen
Agenda:
1. Approval of the minutes of the joint meeting of the Board and Executive Committee on 4 December 2003 (document encl.)
2. Follow up on the Annual plan for 2004 (document encl.)
3. Agenda for this year’s seminar to be held in Mexico (document encl.)
4. Invitation of guests, journalists etc. for the General Assembly
5. Rankings
- status
- contact to the Interstallion group
- budget
6. Budget and financial situation (Rik van Miert and Rudy Eerdekens)
7. Sponsorship web-site
8. Conference on eventing in France (Xavier Guibert)
9. Contact to breeding organizations for sport horses in the new EU member states
10. Co-operation with FEI in EU matters (FEI has established an EU working group)
11. Schedule for Breeding Championship for Young Horses
12. Complaint from New Zealand Trakehner Horses (document encl.)
13. AOB.
1. Approval of the minutes of the joint meeting of the Board and Executive Committee on 4 December 2003
The Minutes were approved.
2. Follow up on the Annual plan for 2004
The different items at the annual plan for 2004 were discussed to get an overview of the standpoint:
a. Legal working group
Klaus Miesner informed the meeting about contact with the EU. He mentioned that the legislation on studbooks was not on the agenda any more and he does not think it will be will be discussed by the EU again. They had previous decided that a studbook has to accept foreign studbooks operating in the country.
The EU legislation on the transport of horses has not yet been adopted and there is no draft to display the old legislation. The EU will come back with a new proposal, where sport horses and breeding stock will be exempt, but the problem is to make a clear definition of sport horses and breeding stock.
Concerning identification of horses there is now an existing draft, where the EU is working on using the number of the microchip instead of the lifenumber. It is very important that the WBFSH makes contact with the EU to explain the importance the lifenumber. One of the arguments is that the microchip cannot be used as a unique number, as it will sometimes break and a new one has to be injected.
It was decided to make a working plan on this very important subject:
- Klaus Miesner will contact Dr. Füssel and Dr. Sprenger to discuss the problem with them.
- Klaus Miesner and Xavier Guibert will prepare an simple summary of how the lifenumber system should be used.
- This summary should be circulated to the executives, so they can make their comments.
- Klaus Miesner and Xavier Guibert will contact Weatherbyseeths and ask if they can accept the lifenumber system.
- Klaus Miesner and Xavier Guibert will organize a meeting in Brussels with Dr. Füssel and Dr. Sprenger to convince them about the importance of using the lifenumber as identification.
There was a discussion of whether the horses should be registered with the lifenumber of the country where they are born or the lifenumber of the country where the studbook they belong to operate (for example a KWPN horse born in Belgium). This should be clarified.
b. FEI rankings
See item 5.
c. Breeding information on starting list
Jan Pedersen informed the meeting that he had participated in the General Assembly of the FEI, where he strengthens emphasised the importance of the work onrecording getting better breeding information on the starting lists.
d. Further development of the web-site
Johan Knaap informed that the Promotion Department are working on getting the rankings on the web-site.
e. Sponsorship
See item 7.
f. Further seminars on judging in co-operation with FEI
Jan Pedersen and Klaus Miesner had discussed this subject with Mariette Withages from FEI. FEI has planned a new dressage seminar in Warendorf 2005, which also could involve the WBFSH members. Johan Knaap informed the meeting that the KWPN will prepare a jumping seminar in January 2005 in Holland.
g. XLM
Xavier Guibert informed the meeting that a pilot project is running in co-operation with BWP. This project will be finish before the General Assembly in Mexico, where the results will be presented.
h. Interstallion
Jan Philipsson and Erwin Koenen joinedt the meeting to explain about the background of the Interstallion and the future activities.
The Interstallion group was set up in 1998 and the overall objective is:” To improve accessibility, understanding and comparability of foreign breeding information across countries”.
The main problems are; information on foreign stallions are often insufficient for the studbooks; many studbooks renumber/rename imported stallions, international competition data has poor pedigree information and sport results of exported horses are missing in the studbook data bases.
The Interstallion group has already made presented an overview of the different testing methods and genetic evaluation. The results can be found on www.interstallion.org where the information is standardized for every studbook. It is very important that the results are updated regularly and it can only be done with the help from the studbooks. The Interstallion group has also published several articles that can be translated to the national magazines.
The next step is to harmonize scale and base to be used by the BLUP-evaluation in the different countries. Most countries use 100 as mean and 20 as standard deviation, but in France they are for example using 0 as mean. The BLUP indexes are also not comparable, because the base group differs between countries. Recommendation will be worked out on the next Interstallion meeting in Slovenia.
In relation to FEI it is very important that they have the right pedigree information and that they are using the lifenumber system. Jan Philipsson therefore suggested that the WBFSH ask FEI to set up a working group to solve these problems, assisted by the WBFSH.
Apart from these activities, there are two Pilot-projects currently running. Emma Thorén from Sweden is working on Pilot-project 1 based on young horse data to find ways for comparing genetic evaluations of stallions across countries. She will examine if the stallions rank the same in different countries and why indexes for the same stallions differ between countries. Data from five breeding organisations are used for this project.
Anne Ricard from France is working on Pilot-project 2. The aim is the same as in Pilot-project 1, but based on sport data and will include more countries. Pilot-project 2, which is paid by France, must be conducted in close collaboration with Pilot-project 1.
If a close connection is found in Pilot-project 1 and 2, the work of the Interstallion group can go further.
It was suggested that it might be possible to get money from the EU to for the Interstallion project. It was decided that Klaus Miesner, Rik Van Mierts and Jan Philipsson will setdraw up a proposal for a letter to EU.
i. X-ray procedures in studbooks
This was discussed on the last meeting in the Executive Committee. The conclusion was that the X-ray procedures are too much involved in the breeding politics of each studbook and that the WBFSH cannot standardize the way of breeding.
j. Young Breeders Competition
The next competition will be held in Denmark 2005. Rik Van Mierst suggested extending the competition to also involve judging of horses in loose jumping and free movement. This should be changed by the Danish organizer in the schedule for the Young Breeders competition.
3. Agenda for this year’s seminar to be held in Mexico
Karina Christiansen informed the meeting about the program for Mexico. CCDM has made a interesting programme with many of activities. The only thing that is missing is to visit some stud farms, but this is very difficult as there are no stud farms or equestrian centres around Guadajala.
Karina Christiansen will ask CCDM to make a presentation about the horse industry in Mexico after the General Assembly.
The agenda for the seminar was discussed and adjusted. It was discussed if there should be a presentation on Interstallion. The Board and Executive committee felt there that there is a need to be presented some results, rather than information about the background and the ongoing work. It was decided to make a presentation on Interstallion if there are some new results from project 1 or 2. If not, they suggested that Erwin Koenen will makewrite up a paper and his paper finish to hand it out at the seminar without giving any presentation.
4. Invitation of guests, journalists etc. for the General Assembly
It was decided to invite Jörg Savelsberg, but the travel expenses should be covered by BCM. It was also decided that Karina Christiansen will ask CCDM to invite some Mexican journalists or televisions.
Invitations should be sending sent to all the WBFSH members, the Interstallion group, the speakers at the seminar and the Patroness. No other special guests should be invited.
5. Rankings
Agreement with FEI:
Jan Pedersen met with Bo Helander to discuss the agreement. Bo Helander made a proposal, which was discussed by the Board and Executives. The following was decided:
- the name should be ”WBFSH FEI World Ranking List…”
- the annual rankings should include results from 1 November to 31 October.
- All horses will be included in the individual rankings, even if they are unknown. The studbook rankings are only open to WBFSH recognised studbooks.
- The FEI and WBFSH will co-operate closely in order to improve the links between the FEI and the WBFSH member studbooks, with a view to enhancing the quality of the horse data that will be supplied by the studbooks to the FEI.
- A royalty of 10% of the public sales price per CD sold shall be divided equally between the FEI and the WBFSH.
- Neither the FEI nor the WBFSH will be responsible for any inaccuracies in the horse data that is supplied by the WBFSH member studbooks.
Status on the rankings:
Hans Van Tartwijk has sent e-mails to all the members asking them to fill in the missing pedigree information on their horses. He has also sent a link to a temporary web-address where the rankings can be seen. After 1 August will the rankings be on the WBFSH web-site.
Contact to the Interstallion group:
It is a big problem that the same studbooks always win the annual rankings. This has been discussed with the Interstallion group and they have promised to come up with some suggestions to make the rankings more objective, for example by taking the size of the breeding population into account. However, Johan Knaap pointed out that the WBFSH cannot present a new calculating form at the General Assembly in Mexico and that it is important first to get control of the current rankings made by FEI.
Budget for the rankings:
The WBFSH-share of the cost for the development of the database and distribution the first year will be Euro 10.000. It was decided that the 5.000 will be paid out of the 2003/2004 budget and the remaining 5.000 out of the 2004/2005 budget.
For the following years the WBFSH will per year pay Euro 4.000 to cover the annual administration of the rankings
6. Budget and financial situation
Concerning In relation to the budget for the General Assembly 2003, it was decided at a previous meeting to pay the rest of the budget to the Irish Sport Horse Horse Board to cover some of the expenses for meeting room etc.
The budget for the web-site is Euros 10.000, but the expenses until now have only been Euros 5.082. Johan Knaap mentioned that the budget for the web-site will not reach Euros 10.000 this year.
The budget for the Interstallion project should be Euros 15.000 instead of 10.000.
A lot of studbooks still need to pay the membership fees. Rudi Eerdekens will send a reminder.
7. Sponsorship web-site
Johan Knaap had asked a professional officecompany to find sponsors for the WBFSH web-site, but without any luck. It mayThis may be due to the fact that the number of visitors to the website is less than 100 per month. be due to the fact that there are less than 100 visitors on a month.
The Board and Executive committee agreed that it was important to get the rankings running. It will then be more interesting to visit the web-site. After that the WBFSH can go look for sponsors.
8. Conference on eventing in France
Xavier Guibert briefed the meeting about the conference in eventing, which will be held in Le Lion d´Angers Friday and Saturday during the Young Horse Championship. The conference starts with an FEI training course. Afterwards there will be a course on young horses.
Xavier Guibert will write an invitation to the WBFSH members.3ht4i4tæiu2 4itjl i24.l
9. Contact to breeding organizations for sport horses in the new EU member states
Klaus Miesner suggested taking making contact with studbooks in the new EU countries and informing them about the World Breeding Federation for Sport horses.