as a hobby breeder, ugh, who mostly deals with terminal animals as a product, i would not like to see exclusion, or if that was decided, it should be allowable that a non-carrier from a carrier parent could be registered. in the end, it's not the line of animals it came from, it's the actual gene, and if breeders see genetics in carrier animals, yes, other than hair or posty legs, freaky fronted, that have merit, there should be an entry point for these animals that someone took the time to breed out the alleles. i support the 4 line items, except a provision for entry of a free animal from a carrier who might be excluded at some future point for being a carrier. I agree with the AMAA sponsored sales being tested and free. there should be however a provisio, i guess i'm repeating myself, for preserving lines, and yes, i'm thinking of paramount, even though many will say he's not deep enough, may be a tad narrow footed behind, he's horned, etc. the point of testing and putting it on the papers, is to use that information and since supposedly now, everyone knows what they are getting into, they should be allowed, with no outlet to sell a carrier without results. since maine's have a large number of known defects compared to other breeds, with these defects in most lines, we should not be having a zero tolerance, especially when other tests for other defects start to show up. obviously angus have a huge pending problem with no test with more numbers out there who will be carriers. other breeds probably have the same number of defects, but since their numbers are much more dispersed and not concentrated into a few founder sires. think if we had a test for all the defects today. would we eliminate all the carriers now? i think monkey mouth, PHA, TH are the same, granted two of them die, but if there is a test, people, well, me, would handle it the same way, breed them to free animals if i thought the carriers had some merit in spite of the defect. in the end, it will only take a few generations. looking back on the problem from a perspective of 100 years, it will be only a blip, and the really bad part will be the perpetual "hiding" of defects now matter what era we are in. take advantage of DNA, don't eliminate variation. it's really hard to break some linkages, and these two are not one of them. my perspective is not the show cattle, but the ancient marble on grass genetics. perhaps this is a myth, but i along with a couple of other people who have way more cows than me are pusuing a line breeding program to moderate size, increase more selection without "single trait" selection for carcass, which in the past has proven to be antagonistic to fertility. perhaps this is just one of those linkages which are hard to break, but it does seem interesting that carcass and fertility on grass, granted in heavy rainfall areas where grass was plentiful year round was noticeable over 100 years ago. obviously they were closer to shorthorns back then. perhaps they grew in size and "breeders" didn't feel the need to moderate them as oppossed to the shorthons they were crossed with, because they came from a different environment. oh well, just dreaming.