Summary: April 2022 CDCB Board Meeting

The CDCB Board of Directors met in Saratoga Springs, NY, on April 18-19, 2022, a session that combined input from the Producer Advisory Committee and visits to two area dairies.

 
Among several project updates and discussion points, the Board reviewed the unusual challenges of the April 2022 genetic evaluations. The Board recommended that new studies about the impact of phenotypic data associated with crossbred animals on the purebred estimates should be carried out by CDCB and USDA AGIL staff. As part of the same effort, the impact of data coming from very large herds, especially when data of a large number of daughters of the same bull is added to the national cooperator database, should be investigated. Following suggestions by staff, the Board authorized disclosure of more results prior to publication date to the Dairy Evaluation Review Team (DERT), in an effort to enhance the process and identify inconsistencies earlier.

John Clay, Jay Mattison, Katie Olson and Lindsey Worden started new three-year terms, representing the various collaborative sectors.

The Producer Advisory Committee (PAC) was established in August 2019 to provide grassroots input for development of strategy, policy and activity, including future priorities and opportunities in genetic evaluations. In April, the CDCB Board of Directors voted to increase the committee from five to six producers, providing consistency with three-year rotations of committee members. Two new producers, Spencer Hackett of Minnesota and Tom Kestell of Wisconsin, were appointed to the PAC with terms effective immediately.

Photo Caption: The 2021-22 CDCB Board of Directors. Front row, left to right: Dan Sheldon (Treasurer), Jay Weiker (Chair), John Clay (Vice Chair) and Lindsey Worden (Secretary). Back row, left to right: Neal Smith, Jay Mattison, Susan Lee, João Dürr (CEO), Katie Olson, Mark Rodgers and Corey Geiger. Not pictured: Paul Hunt and Eddie Ormonde. Photo by Randy Blodgett