I think it's important to keep it in perspective, any and all cats can have a predisposition to certain problems, you're just more likely to be aware of these issues with a pedigree because you can see the previous generations on the pedigree certificate, all of whom should have been tested for various conditions and if any of their litters have shown any of these issues the parents would not be used to breed again and all the kittens sold as pets, because you can trace the parentage back you can identify any recurring issues in a specific breed, this is not possible with moggies. Burmese average life expectancy is a good indicator that a lot of the more serious problems are not overly common. And if you adopt via the Burmese Cat Club or Burmese Cat society you should still have all the pedigree information available to you.

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My "angels", Charlie, Alfie and Sebastien

Thanks for that greentea - you have lovely angels by the way!

Also thanks for your input too, liz.

I think you will find that testing by breeders of any pedigree animal can be patchy, so it is not a done deal. What you describe would of course be the ideal. However you cannot guarantee or assume that a breeder is testing or is even aware of disease in her/his lines or even aware of the diseases that are common in the breed, or is actually caring as to whether her/his kittens do have genetic disease.

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Lauren

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Oh of course, I was trying to say that if you have Burmese breeding with Burmese and so on you can identify trends that it is that breed that is susceptible to a particular problem. A moggie has so many different bits of the feline gene pool that it may have inherited lots of predispositions to various conditions or it may have inherited none, there is no way of pinning them down to being susceptible to specific conditions as every moggie will be different. I know the potential issues that may affect my Burmese but I can't do the same research for my moggies because they're bits and pieces of all sorts (and gorgeous with it!)

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My "angels", Charlie, Alfie and Sebastien

Absoloutely you can and it's especially valuable with conditions which can't be tested for. For example, there are lines of Burmese in the USA which have not shown any evidence of producing the lethal cranial defect for many, many generations.