Debbie wrote:
The reason I ask, is that NORCAL GRC is considering offering a 'clinic' to test for PRA and Pigmentary Uveitis to save costs for the owners by taking advantage of group submissions.
Deb, as a Golden club, you can consider doing a "mass collection" for the OFA DNA repository. For Goldens, GRF will provide collection supplies (tubes, syringes, etc) & GRF pays the $20 fee to OFA for all Golden participants. Club provides vet tech & shipping. Our GRC offered this service free to participants ... the club absorbed costs of vet tech & shipping.
Labs could donate to OFA, too, but they will have to pay their own costs.
The value of the OFA repository: Owners can withdraw a DNA sample in the future if a new DNA test becomes available. Meanwhile the DNA is also available to researchers. With Goldens, the GRCA determines which research studies will be able to withdraw DNA samples. Blood is better for this than swabs since more DNA material is yielded from blood samples.
There is no "storage fee", just the initial $20 fee for putting the sample into the repository. OFA then issues you a certificate with the dog's DNA ID #.
It would be wonderful if LRC could start some sort of program like the one GRF provides. Meanwhile, interested Lab owners could take advantage of such clinics when they are offered by Golden clubs (even though they will have to pay their own fees). Lab or field trial clubs could offer this at their annual health clinics or club events. Our rather small Golden club (37 members) collected 83 samples in January at our annual eye/heart clinic. I think that there are probably at least 30 Golden clubs in the country (haven't counted!) which could mean about 2500 samples a year going into the DNA repository.
If we register 30,000 Goldens in a year, 2500 samples is close to 10% ... but WRT the responsible breeders' population, the %-age would actually be higher since many of the AKC registrations are not from those breeders.
I believe that Goldens now have the largest DNA repository, and were the first breed to have DNA withdrawn for research.
Since Labs are an even larger breed in #s, this could be good preparation for any genetic disease that should become evident in the future, and for research that can lead to DNA tests for some diseases that we already know about ... for example, the RD forms in Labs that do not yet have DNA tests available.