The European Bovine Evaluation (EBE) project aims to bring together tools and skills in terms of genetic indexing for ruminants. Taking shares in the capital ofEBEmust be carried out by a single shareholder per country, “guarantee of the contribution of data in the index calculations and of professional governance of breeders”, explains Eliance, in a press release issued on April 15, 2024.
The breeding advice and service federation has sent its letter of intenton March 31, 2024, to become the French shareholder. A decision that Races de France, the French federation of breeding organizations, regrets, which nevertheless co-invested alongside Eliance in GenEval, a genetic indexing tool for ruminants on behalf of French breeding organizations (OS). “Races de France proposed that GenEval be the representative representative of the French shareholding at the EBE while remaining the interlocutor and delegate of all the OS”, explains the federation of the OS, in its press release, distributed on April 17, 2024.
“The role of OS around indexing is called into question”
The GenEval system already makes it possible, according to Races de France, to pool methods and tools to carry out the genetic evaluation of animals, “under the full responsibility of the OS”. Bringing GenEval as a shareholder for the EBE would then be “the surest way to assert the interests of this collective within this project. »
But Eliance refused this proposal and created an internal consortium of investors “consisting largely of insemination companies”, which “calls into question the role of OS around indexing”, notes Races de France. However, Eliance claims for its part to have formed an internal consortium of investors composed of “selection companies and selection organizations”. The federation of breeding advice and services explains that “the EBE project is part of a global reflection around and in addition to our current tools participating in the French genetic evaluation process, such as GenEval”.
