another important note: cloning. with people needing 25 copies of their pokemon, cloners seemed to come in and walk out with at least a few copies of pokemon from the program... kind of a blow to the "exclusiveness" of the program at the time.
Imo it's good to set up people who are newer to the game who can breed. In all the breeding programs, 70% of all the stuff bred was OU's. I'm all for getting like 20 new pokemon, that's sweet, but when you've already been trading and have like 5 boxes of OU you don't need / want any more forced upon you. get what I mean?
I don't think it should be for "25 handpicked trustworthy breeders", I think it should be for newer people who don't have much. The good breeders here already have/have the capability to trade for most of what they want, not to mention they may already have a lot of the stuff bred in the program. Why deny it to the people who need it the most? It's also dumb to consider letting these pokes outside the program, it's like saying "don't worry if you don't join, you will be able to get them anyways because they'll be as commonplace as plust's Chansey"