3. Interbull CoP - Prerequisites for participation

3.1 Organizations that participate with data must be members of ICAR, and should support the ICAR guidelines for data collection, the principles outlined in “Interbull guidelines for national & international genetic evaluation systems in dairy cattle with focus on production traits” (Interbull Bulletin no. 28) and, where applicable, “Recommended procedures for international use of sire proofs” (Interbull Bulletin no. 4).

3.2 Organizations 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, that a country participates in the evaluation with data. Likewise, participation in Interbull genomic 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 Organizations that participate with data must accept their responsibility as stated in these codes of practice.

3.4 Organizations that do not participate with data, but wish to receive international evaluation results, must be members of ICAR, pay agreed fees (item 10), and sign a service contract and the appropriate letters of agreement with the Interbull Centre.

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

Figure 3.1. Steps for an organization willing to join the Interbull services.