Val, I think you're making some pretty wild assumptions about what data we record and submit and how it is taken. When I was young and naive I thought numbers and epds were everything, the 'modern' way to breed cattle, but a very wise and successful old Angus breeder said to me very simply "that's all very well but find something that fills your eye", it took me way too long to figure that out. BTW, we do submit AHIR data, birth, weaning wts, cow wts, yearling wts.
EPDs encourage outcrossing because the minute you start using your own bulls on your own cows and lose some of that across breed linkage your numbers go in the tank, bw epds go up, growth epds go down and all of a sudden you have 'bad' epds. It's a dilemma only as long as you want to continue to play the purebred one-upmanship game, once you decide that so long as your customers are making money and coming back for more and you appreciate the real depth of quality that will be inherent in your cattle you won't trade them for any amount of numbers.
