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Reports of Meetings | ||
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Dr. Svitojus spoke to the report on the activities of the Working Group for Central and Eastern Europe prepared by himself and Dr. M. Zjalic. Its work had been greatly helped under the EU BABROC programme and the FAO-funded State of the World survey. Several countries are intending to resume their EAAP membership and there would probably be an event to involve the group at the Uppsala meeting.
Dr. M. Zjalic reported on the successful completion of the BABROC Project (see report below) and the intention to launch the Business Support Network for the cattle sector on Sunday morning.
Prof. Guessous summarised the recent activity of the Mediterranean Working Group and praised the Greek organisers for their organisation of the Ioannina meeting which had attracted 200 people from 23 countries and some 140 papers. It was hoped to have the next event in Portugal in 2005.
In 2002, some difficulties occurred with the communication and procedures regarding the production of the book of abstracts. Therefore, in Cairo, the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) discussed the procedure of preparing the Book of abstracts. This resulted in the conclusion that information on the procedure and time schedule for this preparation should be described in detail and sent to the Commission Presidents and the Contact person (CPC) of the Commission. The latter CPC's were already appointed in Cairo. The instruction of handling abstracts, the forms for the programme and some examples from Cairo to clarify the various items were sent on 20 January 2003 to all Commission Presidents and CPC's. It has resulted in a much better process than the year before.
The production of the book of abstracts has been managed by Wageningen Academic Publishers. Their professional approach has not changed and it was all organised including the time consuming co-ordination with all people involved. The production of the book of abstracts No. 9 has run almost according to expectations. The CPC's are very important in that process. However, if in future even more people would be involved in the process for the book of abstracts we have much concern about this whole process and difficulties are expected to increase too much.
Some statistics: The Book of Abstracts contains abstracts of the invited papers and contributed presentations including posters. In total 866 abstracts were submitted and 15 of these have been withdrawn by the author or were rejected based on scientific quality. Authors involved are 2144. The book of abstracts contains 851 abstracts of the sessions of the scientific program for the 54rh Annual meeting in Rome (Cairo: 542, Budapest: 705, The Hague: 748, Zurich: 719, Warsaw: 660). Unfortunately some 30 papers and posters have been withdrawn already due to insufficient finances after the printing of the Book. Local organisers have been informed.
As can be seen, a good Book of Abstracts is available, which will serve as a valuable guide during as well as after this meeting. The production of the book of abstracts has only been possible through the involvement of a large number of people, the CPC's of the EAAP Study Commission and Wageningen Academic Publishers in particular, but also the Organising Committee of the Rome meeting and the EAAP-secretariat in Rome. I like to thank all people for their contribution, which is highly appreciated.
Program: The scientific program was posted in the website of Wageningen Academic Publishers in the end of June. Also after the meeting in Rome the E-mail addresses of the authors of abstracts will be available on the internet site to enable correspondence with the authors about their full paper. There will be no full paper service available through Wageningen Academic Publishers.
Book of abstract 2004: Based on the very positive experiences of recent years, the procedure for submitting abstracts for the next meeting will be kept the same. Abstract forms can be downloaded from the website www.wageningenacademic.com/eaap and have to be returned to Wageningen Academic Publishers before March 1, 2004.
Deadlines:
During the meeting preferably all CPC's of Commissions should be appointed and if they wish they could be instructed about the procedures by Mike Jacobs.
January 1, 2004: CPC delivers a list with invited speakers to Wageningen Academic Publishers
March 1, 2004: Deadline for submission of abstracts EAAP meeting in Bled.
Ynze van der Honing
Editor-in-Chief of Book of Abstracts
Wageningen, August 2, 2003
Present membership of the EAAP Ethics Working Group
Dr Michel Marie, Sciences Animales, ENSAIA, Nancy, France (Chairman)
Dr Gustavo Gandini, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italia
Dr Alison Hanlon, Department of Animal Husbandry & Production, UCD, Dublin, Ireland
Prof John Hodges, Mittersill, Austria
Dr Karsten Klint Jensen, Department of Philosophy, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Prof Eberhard Von Borell, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
(excused: Dr Harry Blokhuis, Dr Simon Horvat, Dr François Madec, Dr Marie-Christine Salaün)
Also attending:
Prof Giuseppe Bertoni, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza, Italy
Dr Mark Kennedy, Writtle College, Chelmsford, United Kingdom
Dr Eva Sondergaard, DIAS, Tjele, Denmark
1. Denomination of the Working Group
It was proposed to name the group as " EAAP Ethics Working Group ", considering that animal welfare is only one component of the ethical issues. The Working Group has interest in ethical issues linked to animal production and use in a broad sense.
2. EAAP, Bled, Slovenia, 2004
Organisation of the Session 5 in the 2004 EAAP Congress in Bled : " Ethical issues in animal agriculture " (under the Management & Health Commission, with the support of the Livestock Production Systems Working Group, the Ethics Working Group acting as co-ordinator; chairman of the session: M. Marie.), Tuesday 7 September 2004, 14:00 - 18:00, Hotel Toplice, Bled, Slovenia.
This session should be focussed on: (a) What are the societal expectations for an ethical animal production? (identification of ethical issues, public perception of ethical values, implementation and evolution of regulations). (b) What are the needs for research in the ethics field in relation to animal production and use? (gaps, objectives, approaches). Potential contributing authors will be informed of these objectives through an active diffusion of the information process.
It was strongly suggested that the communications of the session should be published in a special issue of Livestock Production Science.
3. EAAP, Uppsala, Sweden, 2005
Organization, in association of the Uppsala Congress, 2005, of a Workshop devoted to " Animal Bioethics Teaching: Objectives and Methods " (after the Workshops on animal breeding teaching in Roma and on nutrition teaching in Bled). The Higher Education Working Group agreed with this.
4. EAAP Data Base
Prof G. Bertoni proposed to Dr Rosati to add the item "Bioethics" as a reference term in the database of researchers implemented by the EAAP. The Working Group approved this initiative.
5. Livestock Production Science
Rules for ethical conduct in research for papers to be published in Livestock Production Science. The necessity of specific rules will be examined in a short delay and proposals will be submitted to the discussion in order to give a response to this point in a reasonable period of time.
6. The EAAP Ethics Working Group is willing to serve as an Ethics Committee on the request of the President of EAAP in order to propose a position of the Association on ethical issues, for example on current events subjects raising ethical concerns, whenever needed.
7. In order to popularise the necessity of integrating a moral reflection in research, production, or use of animals in the EAAP fields of interests, the WG will make suggestions to the EAAP Commissions in order to set up common sessions on subjects of ethical relevance.
8. The opportunity and feasibility of developing a special type of fellowship in order to promote the development of research and/or the presentation of research results by young scientists will be explored. A special fund, based on sponsorship, could be imagined.
6. Other points to be take over by the EAAP Ethics Working Group:
10. Functioning of the Working Group
(a) The Working Group could benefit of advices of members of the EAAP known for their commitment in ethical questions, but not in position to actively participate to the current activities of the Group. So a panel of Honorary Members could be set up, who would be kept informed of the activities of the Group, and who could give inputs on a voluntary basis.
(b) The necessity of a strong communication with all sectors of the EAAP and animal production fields of activity is recognized. In order to give a structural basis to this, the Presidents of the EAAP Permanent Commissions will be informed on the existence and aims of the Ethics Working Group, and asked to name one or two contact persons. These correspondents will have the task of identifying the ethical issues relevant in their field of activity, inform on initiatives, events, ... in the domain of ethics, make proposals of action to the Working Group, and will be kept informed of, and associated to the activities of the WG. During this Meeting, Prof Giuseppe Bertoni, Dr Mark Kennedy, and Dr Eva Sondergaard acted in this way.
(c) In order to reach the larger audience of scientists and professionals in the field of animal production, a mailing list and an electronic newsletter will be set up for exchange of information and feed back.
(d) In-between the EAAP Congresses, the Working Group will work through e-mail communication and phone conferences. But the usefulness of one real meeting in the course of the year has been recognized. The EAAP should examine the possibility to support such a meeting.
Michel Marie, Chairman
EAAP Ethics Working Group
marie@ensaia.inpl-nancy.fr
Thirteen colleagues from ten countries took part in the meeting of the Working Group in Rome in September 2003. They noted with pleasure that the two meetings organized this year were successful.
The workshop on Teaching Animal Breeding and Genetics was organized by Dr Ab Groen from Wageningen University and after 2.5 years of AFANET Work this meeting with 25 colleagues had two main objectives:
The traditional Elsevier/EAAP workshop writing and Presenting Scientific Papers was very good appreciated by 14 young animal scientist from nine countries with a average grading for ² overall impression ² 4.6 (scale 1-5 100 % grade 4 - 5). Thank you very much to B. Malmfors, P.C. Garnsworthy and M. Grossman.
At EAAP Bled in 2004 we plan to hold two workshops:
At EAAP in Uppsala in 2005 repetition of workshop Writing and Presenting Scientific Papers which is very important for young colleagues. Also Michel Marie proposes an AFANET/EAAP Workshop on teaching animal ethics objectives and methods.
Jean-Louis Tisserand, Chairman Working Group
ENESAD, 21800 Quetignu, France
Email : jl.tisserand@enesad.fr
The 6th International Symposium of LFS took place at Benevento of Italy in August 2003 with about 100 participants from 17 countries from all over the world. It was organized by the Livestock Farming Systems Working Group (LFS-WG) of the European Association for Animal Production (EAAP), ConSDABI (Benevento), Istituto Sperimentale per la Zootecnia (ISZ), the Horse Commission of the EAAP and the FAO. It benefited the support of the Province of Benevento.
The symposium included two plenary sessions, dealing with quality in traditional and natural livestock products and the role of traditional products in sustainable development of livestock farming, four parallel sessions dealing with technology of elaboration of traditional products, local breeds, traditional livestock farming systems and niche- based development strategies, de-intensifying LFS for enhancing the sustainability and search for local avenues for the development of LFS (selected case studies), and a poster session with 30 posters dealing with all the above topics.
The outcome of this very successful LFS Symposium was the result of the systematic and synthetic approach and cooperation of different disciplines that carry research on biotechnical, environmental and socio-economic issues. The papers presented included results from regional traditional systems to new alternative systems, studies with conceptual methodologies and systematic studies of real life. In these studies there was an integrated approach from producers to consumers, and vice versa, aiming to improve food quality and to assure consumers' health by promoting traditional, high quality, products of animal origin with improved and safe technology. Issues like preservation of animal genetic resources, land use, feed resources and landscape management, rural development, territory sustainability from environmental and socio-economic point of view were also taken into consideration in an integrated approach.
During the meeting there were also thorough discussions about quality definition from the consumers' and producers' points of view, diversified food markets and products' safety and traceability, LFS diversification and their contribution to local development up to the whole society by delivering not only niche products of high quality but also other public goods. In addition to these, from this very successful and very well organized Symposium, a number of very important and useful conclusions and messages came out which can be of great practical importance for policy and decision makers. The Symposium was closed with a wonderful one day technical visit to Molisena, a place of high natural value and at the same time excellent example of animal genetics resources (horses). All the participants thoroughly enjoyed this visit and they were deeply grateful to the organizers. The participants were also impressed by the hospitality of the organizers and the variety and quality of the local traditional products which were offered during the Symposium.
Professor George Zervas
Agricultural University of Athens
Department of Animal Nutrition
Iera Odos 75, GR-118 55 Athens, Greece
E-mail: gzervas@aua.gr
On the request of 11 Project Partners which participated in the EU funded BABROC Project on support to breeders' associations in Central and Eastern European countries, the EAAP Council at its 101 Session established the Council's Working Group to facilitate business and technical co-operation among cattle breeders and producers from its Member Organisations. It decided that the new Working Group would function under the name: Business Support Information Network for Cattle Sector (Cattle Network). The Network is opened to all cattle breeders' and producers' association from the EAAP Member Countries. Its basic scope is an exchange of information to promote and facilitate business operations among breeders' and producers' associations.
At its first meeting held in Rome on 31 August 2003, the Network discussed the European and global trends in production and consumption of cattle products. It requested the other relevant EAAP bodies and national research institutions to undertake a comparative monitoring of the economic position of cattle producers and policy measures affecting the cattle sector.
The Network requested the EAAP to establish a system of electronic exchange of information in support of economic and commercial co-operation among cattle breeders and producers associations in the EAAP Member Countries. The system will contain offers and demands for genetic material, equipment and technologies in cattle production, as a base for the further commercial and technical co-operation to be agreed among interested organisations.
The meeting agreed that the Network should promote the establishment of a European system for the traceability of cattle products as a contribution to the attainment of food safety and consumers' confidence.
The EAAP Secretariat will provide necessary administrative support to the Network. It will establish and up-date the web site for the exchange of information among participating institutions on matters of particular interest to cattle producers. This will include policy changes affecting the sector, events organised by other institutions and cattle shows with all necessary data for farmers and breeders - visitors of these shows.
Activities of the Network will be financed by voluntary contributions of participating organisations and donations.
Milan Zjalic
The Interbull annual meeting 2003 was held from August 29 to 30, in conjunction with the EAAP meeting in Rome. The purpose of the Interbull meetings is to share both new scientific findings as well as experiences of their applications, attracting a mix of people from science and industry. This year's Interbull meeting assembled 127 participants, representing 29 countries, and featured 39 presentations in the Open Meeting.
The first session was devoted to data quality and validation methods, and was chaired by Hans Wilmink of the Netherlands. Various model specific and general approaches to validate results from national genetic evaluations were presented. New ideas to detect and correct for outliers as well as calculation of reliabilities in multiple-trait random regression models were brought forward and discussed. Data mining techniques were utilized to discover erroneous data patterns, and bootstrap methods were used to suggest new criteria for current trend validation methods. Other presentations focused on trends in Mendelian Sampling terms and their associated variances.
The second session, chaired by Enrico Santus of Italy, addressed international genetic evaluations for functional traits. Both results from joint genetic evaluations for neighbouring countries as well as conversion of foreign national genetic evaluation results were presented. Furthermore, an outline of a procedure to calculate weighting factors for international genetic evaluations of calving traits were presented.
The third session, chaired by Rex Powell of the USA, focused on national genetic evaluations for functional traits. Four presentations in this session dealt with udder health traits and three of those with application of random regression models to milk somatic cell. Much of the discussion concerned interpretation and use of outliers from the milk somatic cell lactation curves. It was suggested to give extra weight to observations with large residuals, since they were associated with higher likelihood of mastitis infection. There were also 2, 1, 1, 3 presentations about longevity, conformation, calving and female fertility, respectively.
For the first time research on international genetic evaluations for beef cattle was presented at an Interbull open meeting. An entire session chaired by Brian Wickham of Ireland was devoted to developments in international genetic evaluations based on performance records and the session contained a mix of presentations for both beef and dairy cattle. Across country evaluations for beef cattle still face some organizational hurdles and main focus has been on unique identification and connectedness issues.
An important session chaired by Reinhard Reents of Germany focused on developments in and use of across country bull evaluations. Two presentations from two different countries presented results showing that Interbull evaluations accurately predict future national genetic merit. Another presentation focused on the credibility and consistency of Interbull evaluations from an AI perspective, where some are concerned with low genetic correlations for especially overall conformation traits leading to substantial differences in sire rankings across countries. A presentation showed that correlations calculated with a structural model were very similar to correlations estimated by the traditional approach, but structural models could decrease the number of correlations that need to be estimated. The discussion focussed on different ways of selecting axis countries and the advantage of reduced rank to decrease the dimension of the covariance matrix used in international genetic evaluations. Another study did not find a significant genotype by model interaction among some large European countries.
Finally, the topics of two short free communication sessions, both chaired by Robert Poole, ranged from a method to calculate prediction error co-variances to results from joint progeny testing programs. Furthermore, three countries presented their application of random regression models to production traits.
The proceedings of the Open Meeting are published in Interbull Bulletin No. 31 and are available through the Interbull home page.
The next Interbull meeting will be in Sousse, Tunisia, from May 29 to 30, 2004, in connection with the 34th ICAR session.
The coming Interbull open meetings will be in Uppsala, Sweden in June 2005, and in Kuopio, Finland, in 2006.
Interbull arranges workshops when topics pertinent to Interbull services require more in-depth discussions than are otherwise possible. Such a workshop, which mainly focused on functional traits as well as improvements of the existing Mace methodology, was held in Beltsville in the beginning of March 2003. Comprehensive studies on the feasibility of international genetic evaluations have been conducted for longevity and calving traits and the workshop mostly focused on these traits. 71 people from 21 countries participated and 22 formal presentations were given. The workshop was held in a very good atmosphere thanks to Rex Powell and his colleagues at Animal Improvement Programs Laboratory in Beltsville. Papers presented at the workshop are published in Interbull Bulletin No. 30.
Research on international genetic evaluation of dairy cattle is a continuing process focusing on different areas. A complete listing of on-going research projects known to Interbull and identified research priorities from an Interbull perspective is available on the Interbull homepage. Monitoring and improving input data quality is one area of research, for example investigating the usefulness of analyses of Mendelian sampling variance and effects of ignorability of selection. Research is also being carried out to improve current Multiple-trait Across Country Evaluations (MACE) methodology, such as use of parsimonious models, multiple-trait MACE, and strategies for defining and treating genetic groups in genetic evaluations (e.g. alternative constrains on group solutions and utilizing inter-group information by fuzzy classification). Developments of validation techniques and weighting factors for complex models are receiving high priority to enable application of MACE to new traits, e.g. calving performance and longevity. Our procedure for estimating genetic correlations for MACE are being revisited and research regarding selection of data for genetic (co)variance estimation, different ways of using prior information, impact of uncertainty about genetic parameters on predicted genetic merit, structural models and reduced rank are being considered.
During the Interbull workshop in Beltsville it was decided that international genetic evaluations for longevity and calving traits for the Holstein breed should be added to the Interbull service portfolio, but that appropriate weighting factors and validation techniques should first be developed. These developments have reached a stage where Interbull expects to have the first Holstein test-run for longevity and calving in early 2004. At the same time data will be collected and a pilot study will be performed for other breeds. Interbull evaluations for conformation traits have also been introduced in a staggered time fashion. Research on the use of prior information has made international genetic evaluations for Ayrshire conformation traits feasible despite poor connectedness among participating populations. The first Interbull test-run for Ayrshire conformation traits were performed in September 2003 and the first routine run is envisioned for November 2003, so that there are international genetic evaluations for conformation traits for both Ayrshire, Brown Swiss, Guernsey, Holstein, and Jersey bulls. Female fertility is a trait receiving increased international attention. Thus according to a recent Interbull survey 14 countries now have national genetic evaluations in place for female fertility. The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences has received a grant to investigate multiple-country multiple-trait genetic evaluations for female fertility, and a possible implementation is not expected before 2006.
Since this year Interbull requests information on all traits evaluated in all member countries. The information requested covers details including trait definitions, method of measuring and recording, data included, pre-adjustments, genetic model, reliability calculation, use in indexes and publication practices. This information is made available on the Interbull homepage and is continuously being updated when new information becomes available.
Recent Interbull Bulletins are also available at the Interbull homepage that also hosts a number of different discussion forums related to national and international genetic evaluations of dairy cattle that provide ample opportunity to interact with the Interbull community.
Interbull Technical Committee and Scientific Advisory Committee
Interbull is very pleased with the establishment of the Interbull Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC). The purpose of SAC is to review and propose methodological developments that are needed to maintain the strategic direction, scientific soundness and long-term progress of Interbull services. Georgios Banos, who is the former Interbull Centre director and now has a faculty position at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, was chosen to be convenor of the group that also consists of Vincent Ducrocq (INRA, France), Mike Goddard (Victorian Institute of Animal Science, Australia) and Larry Schaeffer (University of Guelph, Canada).
At the same time the Interbull Technical Committee (ITC) obtained a permanent status. The good experiences with a technical committee for the conformation trait evaluation and the need for general technical assistance led to the establishment of a permanent committee with an expanded number of members. Hans Wilmink continues as Chairperson of the group that also consist of Freddy Fikse, Gerrit Kistemaker, Zengting Liu, Raphael Mrode and Esa Mäntysaari. Tom Lawlor from Holstein-USA is currently representing the Interbull sub-contractor in the ITC.
Thomas Mark
Interbull Centre
The OIE is the intergovernmental organisation dealing with animal health. It has currently 162 members States. The main goal of OIE is to favour animal health throughout the world and also to facilitate international trade without compromising animal and public health. Therefore OIE, on the basis of a permanently updated expert knowledge establishes codes and norms due to reduce the risk of disease spreading. In addition to animal health "per se", since last year, the OIE is also considering animal welfare and food safety. The correspondents in disease reporting to the OIE are the national veterinary authorities in the member countries. They report in a standard way, on regular basis to OIE about what is happening in the field of animal health. In turn OIE produces different sorts of documents: warning messages, routine sanitary information, the OIE bulletin, a scientific journal (Rev. Sci. & Tech.) and diverse documents: books and proceedings of conferences. The website of OIE has been recently restructured and very useful information can be found there. Beside the Direction staff, the beating heart of the organisation is made of commissions and working groups. There are 4 specialized commissions: the "international zoosanitary code commission", "the laboratory norms commission", the "FMD and other epidemics commission" and the "fish diseases commission". Then there are working groups: biotechnology, wild fauna, food safety, animal welfare. Finally there are "ad hoc groups" on particular issues (n = 10, currently). In order to address the problems in a proper way OIE has regional representations which have their own meetings.
In his annual report, Dr. Vallat, director general, reminded the main points concerning the changes taking place within OIE. He also mentioned some aspects of the activities of OIE during year 2002 with a special focus on the role of OIE in connection to WTO (World Trade Organisation). During the 71st general session, the world animal health situation was shown for year 2001. It is out of question of give here all the details. Several cases of FMD were reported in Africa especially in the south of the continent. The disease is endemic in certain African countries like Ouganda. The disease is also still active in Asia especially in China and Mongolia. In the Middle-East countries the disease is endemic. Blue Tongue disease in sheep that started in Europe in 2000 continued to show cases mainly in the Balkans. Cases were also reported in Italy but much less than in 2001. Finally Brazil and Africa were also concerned whereas African Swine Fever was confined to Africa and to Sardinia (Italy) in 2002, Classical Swine Fever developed in Central and South America, in Europe and in Asia.
Regarding BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) Poland and Israel reported their first cases in 2002. The UK still reported more than one thousand cases of BSE in 2002. During the meeting we had two "technical" lectures. One of them given by Prof. A. James from Reading (UK) was about the "economic analysis" in decision making about animal health. It seems that a long way is still to go before those methods are used on routine. Both direct and indirect costs and benefits are to be considered in the analysis. Both monetary and non monetary (social) aspects are also to be considered. In some countries the diseases control plans are really hard to implement due for part to shortage of resources. Another talk (V. Saraiva, Brazil) dealt with regionalisation as a tool for a better control of spreading diseases in the infected areas while permitting trade with the other regions of the country. Obviously certain conditions are needed for that. The regional commission for Europe recommended OIE to play a role in food safety through different ways: contribution to veterinary education, statement of norms regarding pathogens detection, sampling etc
The same conference also recommended OIE working group on welfare to focus first on animal transportation. It is worth noting that Dr. Thomas Billy from the Codex Alimentarius was present at the general session of OIE. OIE and Codex will work together on the critical issues related to the safety of food of animal origin. The "Code Commission" reported on important matters like the process for the evaluation of the national veterinary services, the sanitary rules for international trade, the specific rules concerning BSE and epidemiosurveillance of the disease. Issues related to other diseases like Scrapie also surfaced as well as those related to new technologies like embryo transfer.
The working group on "FMD and other epidemics" had to handle the crucial topic of Avian Influenza. The different aspects of the disease were discussed in the light of the current epidemics in Europe. It has to be noticed that OIE is developing a specific partnership with some international professional organisations like the International Dairy Society (IDS), the FEI (Fédération Equestre Internationale), the World Veterinary Society (WVS), the International Federation for Animal Health (IFAH). This short report must not be ended without telling a word about the perfect organisation of the meeting, attended by governmental delegates coming from so many countries. Simultaneous translation was provided for the main languages. Finally everyone could appreciate the warm climate that prevailed during the meeting.
François Madec
AFSSA, Ploufragan, France
E-mail : f.madec@ploufragan.afssa.fr
Over 850 abstracts were submitted for the annual meeting in Rome and over 900 delegates attended the scientific sessions. The Scientific Advisory Committee is particularly grateful to Wageningen Academic Press and the editor Dr Van der Honing for producing the Book of Abstracts. The Presidents will report later on the scientific activities of the Commissions at the meeting.
A new commission of Livestock Farming Systems started its activities in Rome following a very successful satellite meeting on 'Product Quality' in Benevento. The Commission led by its President Dr Annick Gibon from France will increasingly influence the scientific content of the future meetings. Details of the officers of the new commission are on the EAAP website and they would welcome offers of support and ideas on future scientific activities.
Firstly I'm pleased to report that the initiative led by the Genetics Commission to raise funds for the EAAP foundation has had considerable early success. We need to build on this success. . The Foundation will support the attendance at our meetings of key invited speakers, young scientists and delegates from less favoured areas. Details of the Foundation and its aims can be found on the EAAP website. I would encourage all members to contact Organizations and Companies within their countries to inform them of the Foundation and the benefits that arise from a donation to EAAP to further its scientific activities.
The scientific content of future meetings has been agreed. The programme for Bled in 2004 with its theme of sustainability is summarized in this edition of EAAP News. It is also posted on the websites of both EAAP and Wageningen Academic Press. Shortly abstract forms together with brief summaries of the topics to be covered in each session will be available on the websites to enable offered papers to be submitted. In the past our free communications sessions were not satisfactory. In the first of a series of changes we concentrated free communications into one day and for Bled we will try to arrange where it is sensible for free communications papers to be organized into subject themes rather than grouped under Commissions. We believe this will be better for the author and for the delegates since it will improve discussion.
The theme for meeting in Uppsala in 2005 will be 'The impact of restructuring in Europe and the effects of the changes on future research needs'. The preliminary programme is shown below. In setting up the new programme we have listened to the suggestions of delegates in that they appreciated joint sessions that consider the wider issues, but they also wish to have more focused sessions that reflect their disciplinary/ species interests. This has resulted in a relatively large number of sessions. The preliminary programme will be updated over the next year as further views are expressed from member organizations and the commissions. Changes will be posted on the websites.
In relation to future meetings, the activities of the working groups of EAAP will play an increasing role in the programme. For example the new working group on Ethics led by Prof. Marie of France will be involved in the session on Ethics in Animal Agriculture at the Bled meeting. Also, the working group on Central and Eastern Europe led by Dr Svitojus, which is now changing its focus to the countries of the East (Eurasia), will make an important contribution to the Uppsala meeting on the perspective of these countries to the restructuring process in Central and Western Europe.
We will be issuing new guidelines for the organization of our annual meetings. To our members we are seen as a complex association. Our aim is to simplify procedures to make our work transparent. We will shortly be issuing new guidelines clearly to show the responsibilities of people in the organization of our meetings. In addition we are now updating the 'Instructions to Authors' of theatre and poster presentations to make it clear to all our contributors what they can expect from us and what we expect from them.
The Scientific Advisory Committee wants to connect in a better way with the member organizations and those who attend the annual meetings. We need to do this better to reflect your views in the future scientific programme. EAAP will be sending out questionnaire to discover your interests in the activities of the association. We can then consult you and inform you in a much more targeted way. The EU wants to expand and strengthen the European Research Area to ensure that it meets the needs of end users, to enable networks to be formed to deliver world class science and to disseminate the knowledge gained to end users. EAAP, with its wide network of country representatives over 9 study commissions can play an important part in delivering this vision.
Cled Thomas, Chairman
EAAP Scientific Advisory Committee
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