3. Interbull CoP - Prerequisites for participation

3.1 Service users must be members of ICAR and are responsible for appointing one, or several, NGECs in charge of providing data for a given international evaluation. Both service users and NGECs should support the ICAR guidelines for data collection and genetic evaluation for dairy cattle ( https://wiki.icar.org/index.php/Section_09_%E2%80%93_Dairy_Cattle_Genetic_Evaluation ).

3.2 NGECs that participate with data in the MACE evaluations must sign a service contract with the Interbull Centre, and sign letters of agreement covering the trait-groups, in addition to dairy-production traits, for which they participate in the evaluation with data. Likewise, participation in Interbull genotyped-based evaluations must be preceded by the signature of a specific contract with the Interbull Centre. The service contracts and letters of agreement can be found in Appendix I.

3.3 NGECs that participate with data must accept their responsibility as stated in these Code of Practice.

3.4 The process of becoming part of the Interbull Centre services is illustrated graphically in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1. Steps for a NGEC willing to join the Interbull services.