@sascha,
I have no hound in this hunt and no particular passion for the argument. It’s not that I’m defending the Jockey Club position. Initially you asked:
[quote] What on earth does live cover have to do with breeding soundness? [/quote] and I gave the textbook answer. You disagreed. In fact, so do I, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s the JC’s position. I also think that their position has MORE to do with keeping stud fees high than “breeding soundness.”
The amount of unsoundness kept out of the breeding pool by requiring live cover is small, to be sure. TB breeders aren’t paragons to be emulated, necessarily. For one, TBs aren’t getting faster - racing records are amazingly consistent over the last hundred years. And the focus on racing speed alone has led to the progation of some undesirable traits like poor hoof quality. Also, even with the live cover requirement, the gene pool remains pretty small. Almost impossible to find a NA racehorse without Northern Dancer in their pedigree a few generations bank and AP Indy up closer.
Finally, the real requirement is that the mare and stallion have to be geographically close to one another, alive and able to stand. There is nothing but their conscience that prevents a TB breeder from collecting a stallion and inseminating a mare quietly in the breeding shed and attesting to the JC it was live cover. It does prevent breeding by cooled or shipped semen.
My old repro vet told me once that every time he attended an AI seminar, most of the breeders in attendance were TB people. He didn’t think they were there out of intellectual curiousity.
However, I do think that the TB people have a better record on genetic disease and heritable flaws than QH breeders, Paint breeders, Draft and Arab breeders.
Requiring horses to be inspected and held to a breed standard and a performance standard, as the European WB breeders do appears to be the best way, but even they have had to struggle with WFSS.
