That 'other forum' is somewhat biased in that it has several breeder members who know well they have ignored their pet puppy owners who have returned to tell them their dogs have SM and MVD -- in several cases, refusing to return their calls or respond to their letters, some sent registered (I encourage anyone with an affected dog to send the breeder a registered letter just to confirm it has been received. Then send the results of the scan/heart cert to Sarah Blott for the EBV research). There are show breeders who have sold on their SM-affected dogs outside of the UK, and those who imply the affected dogs that they do acknowledge, came from other breeders when the truth is that a dog of their own breeding was involved in the mating. There are breeders who publicly advocate puppy buyers only buy from breeders with heart certs, yet I have clear evidence in email exchanges of a pet buyer privately encouraged to buy from friends of a breeder who are committee members and who use underage sires and un-heart-tested parents. Many if not most would have used their studs at well under MVD protocol and SM guideline breeding age and the annual lists of litter registrations and the online pedigree databases reveal just how many dams are also bred at under the MVD protocol and SM guidelines.
Some of these people are club health representatives. Many are on their club committees. Some are prominent on the national club.
Their problem is that for all the bluster by some breeders publicly, there are pet owners who have the copies of the correspondence they sent, the MRI scans with the bad results, the cardiologist certs that show early onset MVD; the private email exchanges with some of these people that they saved and have sent on to people trying to work towards better breed health. There are online databases, from pedigrees to OFFA, and the puppy registration publications that make it easy to see who has been breeding outside the MVD protocol. There are the public statements these people have made over the years on email lists and boards that stand in clear contrast to the truth of certain matters (all saved by a few of us as a matter of public record, some of it submitted to the Parliamentary enquiries on dog breeding).
There are increasingly angry pet owners and decent breeders that do care who are sick and tired of the blatant lies from some of these people and their public manipulations. But it is harder and harder for those breeders who know they are covering up to control the information because of the internet. While there are obviously situations in which best efforts will produce affected dogs, the clear facts are that there are people choosing to pretend that SM doesn't exist as long as they don't test or 'see' it in their lines (the same people who mass-kennel their dogs and hardly could be aware of the dogs' day to day behaviours and sell the vast majority of puppies to pet people who never contact the breeder again), and choosing to breed anyway with dogs that should not be bred, and not informing people when they find their dog that produced several -- perhaps hundreds -- of litters turns out to have SM, even to the degree of limping around the show ring.
It's no surprise some have now started to tar and feather Sarah Blott's work with EBVs, because it eventually (it does take time for some!) sunk into their brains that that EBVs will reveal how poor their own lines have been on MRIs and/or heart certs. I always predicted it was only a matter of time til they started to claim they wouldn't follow the EBVs for this reason or that but the plain truth is -- they know they cannot hide from the results of past testing done on their lines and the genetics of EBVs won't lie.
That's why they get so overwrought on public forums -- it is a PR exercise.
I just feel sorry for those breeders who do work hard to address health issues as their efforts are a drop in the ocean compared to the approach of so many, including their own club reps in many cases.