Competition model for international comparisons of livestock

Interbull has been responsible for comparing dairy bulls across countries since the mid-1980s. The current methodology is called MACE (multiple across country evaluations) which has been in use since 1995. Now that genomic data are being utilized in many countries, this has led to two serious problems. The first is that of preselection of young bulls such that the young animals are no longer a random sample of progeny from a sire by dam mating pair. Secondly, some countries are becoming less willing to share genomic data with Interbull. Both issues raise concern over the future of Interbull and international comparisons. This paper suggests a competition model as a potential replacement for MACE. The competition model makes pairwise comparisons between all pairs of bulls within a country and combines these differences across countries through bulls that are used in more than one country. Pedigree information is ignored as are all genomic data because bulls are treated as fixed. The model produces one international ranking of bulls averaging out any genotype by environment interactions which may exist. The competition model is illustrated by a small example. The limitations and advantages of the competition model are discussed.