The three certified breeds of Romanian rabbits and the maximum carrying capacity of the Romanian farmers

Although there were many attempts of the local breeders to create a first Romanian Rabbit breed during the last century, they failed to finish it. Before the 2000's Romania had no certified rabbit breed. All three rabbit breeds produced and certified in Romania so far have been recently created and consolidated: the Transylvanian Giant Rabbit, the Rabbit of Cluj, and the Szekler Rabbit. These three breeds were certified by the National Livestock Production Agency in 2016 and, having in view the present EU legislation, it is debatable if the forms of "homologation" according to the old Romanian legislation are necessary as long as the term "breed homologation" does not exist in the EU legislation. The previous experiences of livestock conservation showed us that large number of breeds and relatively low numbers of breeders can produce populational bottleneck in some breeds, followed by decline and extinction. Therefore, in our opinion three native rabbit breeds are enough for the Romanian rabbit breeders carrying capacity.