"From January 2022, the Kennel Club will limit the assignment of ‘hereditary clear’ status of registered dogs to two generations. This change will be put in place to safeguard against the impact that dogs with an incorrect ‘hereditary clear’ status could have on health issues within a breed.

Following on from a recent Kennel Club study, published in the journal of Canine Genetics and Epidemiology, the decision to restrict hereditary status was made by the Kennel Club Board on the recommendation of the Dog Health Group.

Hereditary clear status is given to dogs that are determined to be free of specific genetic material linked to a particular inherited disease. The Kennel Club’s registration system assigns a dog this status if their parents are known to be clear, either because they have both been DNA tested as clear, or because they are hereditary clear themselves.

Dogs could be mistakenly given a false hereditary clear status for a number of reasons; for example if there has been a failure of laboratory protocols, pedigree errors or incorrectly recorded parentage. In these instances it is unlikely that the inaccuracies would be noticed immediately, but rather that several generations later many dogs throughout the breed descended from the individual with the original incorrect status will also have erroneous hereditary status, and the well-intended mating of two such apparently hereditary clear dogs risks producing affected puppies.

Full article HERE

Simple way ensuring that the hereditary clears are genuine would be to parental DNA test all litters. When you consider the price of some breeds's puppies(Have seen £1,000 + for breeds like GSDs, BCs, etc from partially or non DNA tested parents(parents were NOT hereditary clear))the parental DNA test is peanuts.

I understand this is the case for SV registered GSDs in Germany, following a massive scandal involving top people in the breed in Germany & here in the UK & faked health testing & pedigrees

From personal experience you can know the mother of your puppy(normally), but the father isn't always the dog the bitch was knowingly mated to.

Rather than a false result being in the pedigree it could well be a dog's parents being incorrectly recorded(as I know has happened with a puppy from a different database) The simple DNA test at the time of microchipping or just after would prove parentage

This is excellent news. Sad that it has been so long in coming and that we have to wait so long for implementation.

Can we not ask the owner of a proposed stud dog, for us to scan him for his microchip number and then cross check this with his DNA certificate.
Same for bitch owners, they could be scanned and checked against their DNA certificates. Or would this not resolve anything !?

I have wondered for quiet a while how long the heredity clear to hereditary clear status/generations could carry on without any further checks

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They do this in the US under the OFA scheme

I think this is fine because it's being combined with a sort of 'one set of swabs to test for everything' package which the KC are offering, and that costs about the same as a single test - to test for all conditions that affect a breed.  So it doesn't really cost more than testing for one condition, to test for all of them.  So I think this is good...

> Simple way ensuring that the hereditary clears are genuine would be to parental DNA test all litters.

We do that in Silken Windhounds, before you can breed from a silken you must have it's parentage verified. It's a good system because there have been a couple (that I know about, presumably there are more) that were not sired by the dog the breeder thought, in both cases another boy on the premises must have got to the girl too and had faster/better swimmers!

Silken breeders in America are extremely diligent about testing for absolutely everything, so it's good to know that genetically clear is actually true because we've verified the parents dna.

>Simple way ensuring that the hereditary clears are genuine would be to parental DNA test all litters.

That's assuming that the verified parents are genuinely hereditarily clear.

> That's assuming that the verified parents are genuinely hereditarily clear

True, it's easy with silkens because every single one is dna verified.

For other breeds you'd have to retest a generation then from that point use parental verification going forward. Or do what silken people do when a new dna test is developed, they test the oldest surviving ancestors.

>failure of laboratory protocols..........

so how much faith does that give you in the labs doing the tests to start with?

Yes I can understand the reasoning as I've been on the receiving end of somebody who lied about my new pups grandparents, which so say made his mum HC, whereas in fact she was pra affected, all he got was a slap on the wrist and told not to do it again

FB replies:

Dawn Riddell says: Surely using all the tools available to try to ensure the health of your puppies is what makes us better than those "other" people that produce puppies. Anything that provides evidence that we care about these things has got to be a good thing.

Sue Williams says: Genes mutate so this isn't a bad thing and they do it under the OFA scheme too

Michelle Chitty Seaquest says: More expense...to hit the hobby breeder !

--- Libby Montague-Brown says: Michelle Chitty Seaquest surely worth it for the good of the breed?

---- Michelle Chitty Seaquest says: Libby Montague-Brown agreed..but some of us have been breeding for 30 odd years..we should know our lines

cont'd

Michelle Chitty Seaquest says: Libby Montague-Brown of course...have done that by trial and error over the years.. but glad to say mostly success...it's just sad this is the way things are going..it's all about the money...do people breeding all these cross breeds have to do the same ??. I think not !

--- Libby Montague-Brown says: Michelle Chitty Seaquest personally I think it's great that people will no longer be doing "trial and error" but having all the information for the correct pairings, trial and error isnt good enough, as it's the pups that suffer. How is it about money? The KC dont make any money if independent labs are used.

---- Michelle Chitty Seaquest says: Libby Montague-Brown well as usual...others know better.. hasn't done me or my puppy buyers over the years any harm...my trial and error. I had good teachers !.. I am all for health testing..as anyone who KNOWS me will tell you...I run a breeder clinic for your information...so before you belittle my experience and knowledge anymore I will just leave you with this
No matter how many people test for however many problems there are in their breed...there are always the unscrupulous. .dishonest people who throw the spanner in the works..and it's us small home breeders who suffer...we have to pay for their dishonesty..don't get me wrong...testing is a must..but should be for all ...
As for KC not making money...they are doing fine..and the more they promote. .doodles etc..the more our pedigree native dogs suffer!

This new law will still be open to fraudulent results unless the KC insist the dna is taken by a vet who must check the microchip at the time of sample being taken.

Absolutely agree Spencer1

I think this is fine because it's being combined with a sort of 'one set of swabs to test for everything' package which the KC are offering,

As long as you have one of the 13 breeds, that is. If not, you can't do it. I don't have any of those breeds.

Oh gosh really?  I just assumed it was for all breeds.  I hope they will expand it...