Australian Stud Book won the case. Will post links as they become available. Means that AI will continue to be banned.

Also at:
http://www.racenet.com.au/news/86155/Ar ... e-defeated

The dark ages continue, anyone have a flashlight?

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Every mighty oak was once an acorn that stood its ground.

Sorry but I agree with the ASB's stance on this. It is just too open to abuse by unscrupulous people. The horse would become dispensible so long as enough semen was stored.

I'm with wymanda. I stand firmly against AI and ET in Thoroughbreds.

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So Run for the Roses, as fast as you can.....

Horses are not like cows. You can't store semen forever and some doesn't freeze well at all. But many breeds are already using this to the horses advantage, they collect it and freeze it (if it will) and the horse can be gelded and live a normal life.

If every other breed/species of animal can use AI and ET then I don't see why TBs cannot manage their own house. They would certainly need to agree to an inbreeding coefficient though.

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Every mighty oak was once an acorn that stood its ground.

Why do you think a stallion who breeds mares is not leading a normal life?

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So Run for the Roses, as fast as you can.....

The only accurate way to calculate inbreeding coefficient is by quantifying the genetic variation present in an individual genome. That's quite possible, albeit not cheap, to do but at present there is little published information as to which among thousands of variables are crucial to fitness of the breed. So establishing and enforcing specific requirements would be next to impossible. There is published evidence, from genomic analysis, that inbreeding in the TB has increased over the past 40 years, especially so in the past 15 years (Binns et al. 2012). Imo, whatever advantages there are to AI and other forms of assisted reproduction, they do not outweigh the risks of exacerbating that trend in a closed population.

Stalled up away from a herd is not a normal life. Very few stallions are allowed their own mare herd. Just being stalled for any horse is not normal but being socially isolated besides is not good for any horse.

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Every mighty oak was once an acorn that stood its ground.