Animal Science Department
Title
Letter to the Editor
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
2008
Abstract
I am a co-author of papers published in the Journal
of Animal Science by Moeller et al. (2004) and Serenius
et al. (2006) that report data from the National Pork
Producers Council Maternal Line Evaluation project
(MLE). In his letter to the editor, DeBuse (2007) claims
that the authors of these papers misrepresented the
line submitted by Newsham Hybrids (USA) Inc. (NH;
Colorado Springs, CO) to the MLE. Below are the facts,
as I know them, regarding the design and implementation
of the MLE.
The MLE tested crossbred females that represented
maternal lines available to producers. It was designed
to detect differences between lines for longevity traits,
with probabilities of type 1 and type 2 errors of 0.05
and 0.75, respectively, requiring 531 females per line.
The number of sires depended on the effective population
size of the nucleus populations. Each participant
was required to submit a minimum of 590 gilts per line
to assure 531 breeding gilts. To assure that the nucleus
populations were materially closed, 90% of the litters
born during the last 5 years were required to have a
sire that was born within the population, and 90% of
the litters were required to have a dam that was born
in the population.
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Published in Journal of Animal Science 2008. 86:1036–1037. Copyright © 2008 American Society of Animal Science. Used by permission.