In 2018, new European Zootechnical Rules will apply.

On November 1, 2018 the new European Zootechnical Rules, voted on June 8, 2016, will apply.

These new rules will replace a part of French legislation on animal selection, in particular the Animal Breeding Act of 1966 and the 2006 Agricultural Guidance Law.

Amongst the changes provided by this European legislation includes the creation of Selection Organisations (OS) whose prerogatives are, amongst others, genetic evaluation. These new rules end the INRA's regulatory mission for genetic evaluation. In order to maintain a high level of mutualisation, the current federations and the future OS actors have created a structure named GenEval(*), whose vocation will be to perform genetic evaluations for ruminants under the responsibility of the OS. In parallel, the INRA will continue to manage the zootechnical database for the government in order to produce indicators on the OS's activities and genetic resources. This database will supply GenEval for its evaluation activities and the INRA for its research activities. The eBis UMT (Jouy) and Génomique des Petits Ruminants (Toulouse) will ensure methodological studies upstream of the evaluation. During 2018, the INRA will ensure a transfer of its genetic evaulation activities to GenEval and will contribute to the training of its personnel.