FOCUS GROUP - BULLETIN 1
(published with permission)

Dear Breeders and Exhibitors

On Saturday, 16 February 2008, an informal Open Meeting was called in Gauteng to debate the concerns of clubs and members around KUSA's latest initiative to commission comparisons of the Kennel Club breed standards with those of the FCI.  Several breed clubs dedicated to breeds still holding Kennel Club standards, and their members, interpreted this venture as a signal that the moratorium the FCI had granted KUSA for conversion to FCI standards had run out and that there had been renewed pressure on KUSA to honour its obligations as a Full Member of the FCI.

Although KUSA has since argued that the commissioning of the comparisons had merely been an administrative exercise which, in earlier days, would have been undertaken by the late Mike Darwin in the KUSA office, one is given to question why KUSA would burden people with such an arduous task, likely to involve weeks of intensive labour, merely to have comparisons on file in order to deal with enquiries KUSA might receive from time to time.  Are the KUSA office staff really best placed to deal with enquiries relating to the intricacies of comparative breed standards when there are breed clubs, and breeders, to which such complicated questions may be referred?
It has become important to people who have bred and exhibited dogs to Kennel Club standards for decades to be assured that their breed standards are secure and protected in the FCI environment in which KUSA has elected to operate.  As it is the choice, and right, of those breeds which have adopted FCI standards to convert to them, so is it the prerogative of breeds wishing to retain their Kennel Club standards, to do so.

Two further issues relative to KUSA's Full Membership of the FCI were also briefly discussed at the Open Meeting, i.e. the confusion around the addition of breeders' affixes (kennel names) to imported dogs in the light of the FCI's directive that the registered name of a dog may not be changed, and the instruction from the FCI that KUSA should no longer recognise the breed registries (stud books) of our Northern neighbours, notably Zimbabwe and Zambia.

The Open Meeting was attended by some sixty people and the general comment was that it was a “well run” meeting.  It proceeded strictly in accordance with the Agenda and the presentations of the various people were informative, but brief.  The attendants were given ample opportunity to speak and it was evident from the interventions that people were generally very poorly informed.
In the end a Resolution was made for a Focus Group to be appointed to garner information about the FCI and related issues, and to disseminate such information to breeders and exhibitors country-wide in an effort to counter misinformation and/or misapprehension.  A further objective is to urge people to raise their concerns in their respective clubs to hopefully encourage proposals based on informed decisions going forward to their Provcos.
The meeting appointed six people to the Focus Group – Francesca Browning-Cristina, Jackie Browning, Lucienne Ferres, Ron Juckes, Philip Kleijnhans and Gérard Robinson.  Other interested parties willing to do research and obtain information were welcome to contribute to the activities of the Group.
Just prior to the Resolution there was a call to “take the temperature” in the room (not that it's of any consequence) and the results were:

In favour of KUSA's remaining Full Members – 2
Abstentions – 1
In favour of KUSA's reverting to Associate Membership – the rest

Yours sincerely,
FCI Focus Group