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Reports of EAAP Study Commissions | ||
| Number 49 | |||
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We can all look back at a very good and interesting meeting in Rome. The scientific quality of the presentations in the Genetics commission was very good and we had some very good discussion on a number of topics.
On Sunday morning recent developments in incorporating molecular information in breeding schemes was presented. It was illustrated how molecular information regarding biodiversity can be utilised to support programmes that aim at utilising within and between breed genetic variation. An overview of current applications of marker assisted breeding in different species was presented. The second session concentrated on the genetics of behaviour. The first invited speaker gave a good overview on molecular genetics of behaviour with emphasis on research strategies used in model organisms and perspectives for farm animals. The second invited speaker gave a good review on the genetic background of maternal behaviour and its relation to offspring survival. Some very interested results were presented in the contributed papers which underlined that this is an interesting area for the future. The joint session with the commission on Animal Physiology concentrated on functional genomics applied to growth, tissue development and meat quality in farm animals. Advances in computing strategies for animal breeding were presented on Tuesday afternoon. The last session concentrated on genetics and quality of animal products. The first invited speaker gave an excellent overview of animal breeding and product quality. He clearly illustrated that quality received attention in animal breeding programmes for many years but that the definition of product quality has changed over time.
In addition to the above mentioned session, there were three free communication sessions. This session did give a good insight into on-going genetic research and provided some very interesting new ideas. We can look back at a very good meeting. The meeting was well organised by the Italian organisers and provided good opportunities to meet people and to exchange ideas. Details on the upcoming meeting in Bled and Uppsala can be found in this issue of EAAP-news.
At the end of 2002, the EU-funded project EFABIS was started co-ordinated by EAAP. The objective of the project is to create an integrate infrastructure of databases to monitor farm animal biodiversity (FAB) in Europe. This project will meet the specific requirements of the European continent as well as the need for full compatibility with the Global Information System (DAD-IS) of FAO. The outcomes of the project will be made available to the widest range of potential users. It will be an important tool in characterisation, utilisation and conservation of those genetic resources. The project will help rationalise the monitoring of livestock and poultry genetic diversity, and favour a greater awareness of the genetic resources available to the European farmers. The new European database structure will help the countries in collecting information on the hand and will be integrated with DAD-IS, which is designed to link all parties to the FAO Global Strategy for the Management of Farm Animal Genetic Resources (for further information www.eaap.org).
During the business meeting Erling Strandberg (Sweden) was unanimously elected as the new active secretary of the genetics commission. He will replace Andreas Hofer (Switzerland) after the meeting in Bled. On behalf of the commission, Vincent Ducrocq (France), who started as new president after the Rome meeting, thanked Johan van Arendonk and Miguel Toro for their contributions to the commission during the past 6 years. Members of the Genetics commission for the coming year are Vincent Ducrocq (President, France), Andreas Hofer (secretary, Switzerland), Elzbieta Martyniuk (Poland), Asko Maki-Tanilla (Finland), Miguel Toro (Spain) and myself.
Johan van Arendonk
President of Genetics Commission
In total the Nutrition Commission was associated with seven sessions at the Rome meeting. All of them were, in effect jointly with other Commissions. Three of the sessions, including the 'Free Communications' session of the Commission were focused on the theme of 'product quality'. The two main sessions on this theme were very good and brought together supply and demand issues across the producer-consumer chain. The papers from these sessions will be published in a special issue of 'Livestock Production Science' and the volunteer editors for that issue (Jan-Tind Sorensen and Kierston Jacobson, both from Denmark) are thanked for developing that initiative.
Use of the Commission's 'Free Communications' session as a further opportunity to hear about topical research on product quality worked well and produced a lively set of papers. The Scientific Advisory Committee is looking into ways to group together submitted papers into systematic sessions to give more focus to these parts of the programme. The success with this approach for our session in Rome worked well and is a good sign for the future.
Another innovative development was a joint session with the Horse Commission on the impact of feed processing in horse nutrition. There are good opportunities for combining the interests of these two Commissions but people with specific nutrition interest poorly attended this session. It would be good to see some focus on comparative aspects of nutrition and both the Horse and Nutrition Commissions would welcome suggestions from readers as to how we might develop that theme.
Attendances at all of the sessions were rather good with no fewer than 50 people (and up to 150) attending each session.
The theme for the Bed meeting is on sustainability and we will be involved in major sessions on sustainable management of grasslands with the Livestock Farming Systems, Cattle and Sheep Commissions. I also perceive a very considerable ground swell of interest in exploring opportunities to harmonize feeding systems across Europe. For all of the livestock species there is a wide range of national systems for estimating energy and nutrient requirements and for the evaluation of feed stuffs. The differences amongst the various approaches can be quite modest but, for very understandable reasons, allegiances to particular approaches have been strong. However, in a number of areas of Europe it is some time since systems were reviewed and perhaps this presents opportunities for harmonizing approaches to have some more consistency in the core issues. We are therefore planning to have sessions, both in Bled and, in 2005, in Uppsala, to explore opportunities for harmonization. The Bled session will deal specifically with nutritional standards (estimation of requirements) the meeting in Uppsala will focus on harmonization of methodologies for feed evaluation. It would be my personal hope that these discussions will develop, overtime, to encompass also the prediction of animal responses to feeding, but at this stage I am simply delighted to listen to the enthusiasm for using EAAP to facilitate a more harmonious approach across the European area. Bled is a beautiful location and I encourage you to attend.
The theme for this meeting will be the consequences of changes in the CAP and the expansion of the European Community for priorities in animal production research. As outlined elsewhere in this issue of EAAP News, the new approach to planning for the programme of Annual Meetings, means that three of the main sessions will deal with topics that are relevant to the theme and will be of wide interest across all Commissions. There will be much of interest to the Nutrition Commission in those general topics. The other three main sessions will deal with topics of particular interest to this Commission, including the Free Communication session. The programme has yet to be finalized but is likely to include a session on harmonizing approaches to feed evaluation (as mentioned above) and a session on nutritional alternatives to use of antibiotic growth promoters.
For the first time the Energy Nutrition and Metabolism, and Protein Nutrition and Metabolism Symposia were held in Rostock Dummerstorf in September 2003. The meeting was well attended with a vigorous scientific programme. At the end of the meeting plans for the future were discussed. There was unanimous agreement that the two symposia should join together into one and a new International Organising Committee had already been nominated to take the series forward. It was agreed at the meeting that the next symposium would be in France in 2007, and the subsequent one in Italy, probably in 2010.
At the EAAP Meeting in Rome, Professor Matteo Crovetto was appointed as the new President of the Nutrition Commission. Matteo has previously supported the Commission as Secretary and I am delighted that he has agreed to take up this role. I am sure that he will welcome input from readers of EAAP News on any matters to do with the Commission's interests.
The other Officers of the Commission: Professor Jan Erik Lindberg, Uppsala, Sweden; Dr Isabel Ortigues, INRA, Theix, France; Secretaries: Professor George Zervas, University of Athens; Doctor Eva Cenkvary, Hungary.
For the meeting in Bled Eva Cenkvary will act as the 'contact person' co-coordinating consideration of submitted abstracts.
Professor John D Oldham, President
Nutrition Commission
The sessions of the physiology commission this year focussed topics related to growth and development covering such aspects as long term effects of pre- and postnatal nutrition, effects of bioactive components in milk on adaptation and survival of the new-born, the role of IGF's and related hormones on tissue differentiation and sessions on muscles and lipid metabolism. Furthermore we had a session on functional genomics of growth jointly with the commission of genetics. This session was the third in a series of joints sessions between the two Commissions where the potential of the new molecular techniques are explored. Next year the session will focus aspects related to lactation. The overall leadership of the sessions were handled by one of the commission vice presidents Chris Knight from The Hannah Research Institute.
During the sessions many interesting topics were discussed. As an example: In the session on the importance of biological components, it was discussed that even if the components have biological effects, the effects are very difficult to demonstrate in vivo. Similarly, it is often difficult to demonstrate postulated health benefits in humans of changes in product composition. That is true even if the effects are real. This just to illustrate the benefits gained from participating in the annual goes beyond just listening to presentation and reading the abstracts.
At the business meeting the proposal for the 2005 programme was discussed along with other organisational topics such as poster presentations and circulation of papers at the meeting. The input will be used in the further discussions. Finally, Chris Knight, UK was re-elected for his second term as vice-president.
Kris Sejrsen, President
Animal Physiology Commission
The Management and Health Commission had a major input into the main theme in Rome on "Product quality from livestock systems". The first session on "Animal health and welfare aspects" was chaired by our commission vice-president J.T. Sorensen (DK) with input from several other study commissions and the FAO. Four of the main papers dealt with product quality attributes, animal health, welfare and food safety aspects in extensive and organic livestock farming systems. Indicators for the assessment of health and welfare in animal friendly housing systems in Switzerland and a newly initiated EU network project (SAFO) on the integration of animal health and welfare issues with food safety aspects were presented. Two papers on extensively-housed pigs emphasised that overall product quality differences are relatively minor compared with the wide variations in the housing environment. The real and perceived differences in product quality are more related to marketing attributes than to the production system itself. The situation of extensive indoor and outdoor housing in the Midwest of the United States was presented by our invited ASAS speaker Mark Honeyman from Iowa State University. The successful concept of low cost pig housing with bedded hoop (tent-like) structure was demonstrated, a project that was initiated by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Other papers dealt with concepts for the assessment and monitoring of health, welfare and food safety on dairy and organic beef production systems. The session was flooded with many contributions that had to be moved to other sessions or were presented as posters. A special issue with some of the main relevant papers and posters are in preparation with Livestock Production Science.
A session on the hot EU topic "Electronic identification in farm animals and traceability" was chaired by R. Geers (B) with input from the OIE and ICAR. Most of the seven speakers devoted their talk to the current European initiative to identify and trace cattle, pigs and small ruminants. The concept of traceability was introduced to the audience and the role of the OIE within international organisations working in the framework of the sanitary negotiations was emphasized. A status report (officially issued in April 2003) on the large scale IDEA (Identification Electronique des Animeaux) project and its implementation into the EU legislation was given. A new draft legislation for the identification of sheep and goats was presented. Implementation is expected to happen in the near future. Examples of techniques and monitoring systems for identification, traceability and disease spreading in different species from various countries were given. It should be mentioned that some excellent posters were presented in this session and the one from Ghirardi, Caja, Garin and Hernandez-Jover from Barcelona (SP) on "Electronic boluses features and retention law in the reticulorumen of cattle was chosen by the commission as the best poster.
The session on "Air quality in animal housing" was organised by Jörg Hartung (D), who introduced the subject with emphasis on bioaerosols. It was concluded that the reduction of indoor pollution to improve health of animal and man and the establishment of safe distances to neighbouring residential areas are essential for future development of sustainable animal farming. Most of the papers in this session focused on the identification and measuring techniques for dust, gases, airborne micro organisms and fungi in animal houses. It became clear that more research is needed on the impact of these pollutants to better understand potential health risks for humans and animals. Existing threshold levels are not always based on sound results from on farm studies.
Our Management and Health Commission Business Meeting was held in conjunction with the "Free communication session". The commission has now a very efficient board group that participated in the session activities as chairs, contributors or in the planning and organisation of future meetings. The new secretary of our commission, Christine Fourichon from Nantes (F), did a great job in structuring the free communication session with a variety of management papers ranging from rabbit rearing environments to modelling health status of pigs in different environments. Michel Marie (F), the new chair of the EAAP ethics working group introduced the audience to issues in animal bioethics teaching and informed everyone that a whole session will be devoted to animal bioethics in animal agriculture at the next EAAP meeting in Bled in 2004. Our commission will strongly support this new EAAP initiative.
Our vice-president Jos Metz (NL) organised and chaired a high quality session on "Locomotor disorders in cattle, pigs and poultry. This very relevant topic (eg. estimates for lameness in dairy cattle are reported to be in the range of 25 %) was introduced by himself as an excellent overview and then handled across species by experts of various countries with a strong emphasis on assessment techniques and epidemiological research. Causing factors, prevalence and assessment criteria of locomotor disorders were presented from studies in pigs, cows and poultry. A decision support model that allows a systematic weighing of the consequences of impaired locomotion in the various biological functions such as foraging behaviour, body care and safety was proposed. A critical contribution from the Ecology and Epidemiology Group in Warwick, UK discussed the relative merits of using foot lesions versus lameness as measures for locomotor disorders and the confidence that we can have in currently identified risk factors from these studies. In this session, the paper from van der Tol, Metz, Noordhuizen-Stassen, Back, Braam and Weijs from Utrecht (NL) on "The biomechanical effect of claw trimming" was selected as the best presentation of a young scientist by our commission.
Eberhard von Borell, President
Commission on Animal Management and Health
The Livestock Farming Systems Commission (LFS Commission) is the last newborn Commission of the EAAP. It entered into activity at the end of the Rome Meeting, after the election of its board in Cairo (August 2002). The board includes three vice-presidents: Profs. Stefan Mihina (Slovakia), Kurt Peters (Germany) and George Zervas (Greece) and two secretaries, Drs John E. Hermansen (Denmark) and Alberto Bernues Jal (Spain). Dr Annick Gibon (France) is the president. The EAAP Meeting 2004 in Bled will be the first year when the Commission contributes a full programme of sessions to the annual meeting programme.
This Commission follows from the results of the activity of the Livestock Farming Systems Working Group of the EAAP created in 1995. The activity of this working group aimed at consolidating the fundamentals of Livestock Farming Systems (LFS) research. LFS research constitutes a trend in animal production research which emerged in various European countries between the early 1980s and the early 1990s with the objective to establish an integrated approach to real life livestock systems in support to the sustainable development of livestock husbandry. International exchanges at European level in this area of research were undertook at the beginning of the 1990s and resulted into the creation of the LFS WG of the EAAP. The Working Group objectives have been to support the consolidation of the theoretical and methodological fundamentals of this emerging trend of research in Animal Production sciences. Until now 6 international LFS Symposiums have been organised as satellite activities of the EAAP Annual Meetings. Fully refereed books have been produced from the material of the symposia, which offer an overview of the state of the art in the research field (Gibon & Matheron, 1992; Gibon & Flamant, 1994; Dent et al. 1996; Sorensen, 1997; Gagnaux et al.,2000). Since the 2nd symposium of the series, the books produced are published in the EAAP Scientific series. The last symposium in the series took place in Benevento this year as a satellite of the Rome Meeting (see the report by George Zervas).
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| Figure 1: Common conceptual model of a livestock farm (from Gibon et al., 1999) |
The specificity of LFS research is to cooperate with a wide array of disciplines in order to develop and integrated approach of real-life systems in which animal production is addressed not only as a production process but also as a "human activity system" (Figure 1). It relies on the use of system theory for building models linking socio-economical systems and technological systems at various levels of organisation (herd, whole farm, commodity chain, small region). An overview of the fundamentals of the approaches, and of the connections of LFS research with the other branches of animal production sciences have been given in a paper presented in Livestock Production Science (Gibon et al, 1999). In order to support the sustainable development of livestock production, research aims at providing farmers and other managers in the sector with decision aids and tools for negotiation for helping the process of adapting livestock production activities to the new demands of society. Field observation and strong partnership between the researchers and the managers (participatory research) are important bases of the methodologies developed (Figure 2).
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| Figure 2: Objectives and methods of Livestock Farming Systems Research at the farm level |
Recently, thanks to an FAO-EAAP joint-action, a tentative application of LFS research approach to the highly complex issues of the restructuring of livestock systems in Central and Eastern Europe as been undergone by a group of teams from various research institutes in both western and central Europe. The results of this cooperative research have been published in the course of this year in the EAAP Technical Series number 3 (Gibon and Mihina, 2003). They illustrate the potential of LFS research to support the adaptation of animal production research orientations to meet the challenges induced by changes in the societal expectations with respect to animal production. The integrated views of livestock farming activities that such approaches allow to establish help to identify in the variety of local conditions both the connections to search for with other disciplines and the further effort in animal research requested for supporting efficiently the managers in adapting livestock production systems to the multiple functions agriculture as nowadays to insure in the society. The current trends in agricultural development lead animal production scientists, especially LFS researchers to address livestock farming at increasing wide level, from the herd up to the whole farm, the localities and the commodity chains.
In the next programmes of the Annual Meetings the LFS Commission will effort to contribute the EAAP with the advances gained in the research field and to cooperate with the other Commissions for consolidating its contribution to the design of a more secure future for livestock production. The business meeting held during the Rome Annual Meeting (September 2nd 2003) allowed to identify issues of common interest to address within the framework of sessions prepared by the LFS commission as single and joint sessions with other commissions. Within the topics evoked: the assessment of the livestock farm as a human activity system, the adaptation of LFS and their opportunities to meet new societal demands, the building of models of herd dynamics in reference to the adaptation to new functions, the methods and tools for diagnosis of real life LFS, the decision support tools for livestock farmers, the strategies for prevention of endo-parasites in grass-based LFS, the impact of climate change on livestock systems, the assessment of livestock farm diversity at the small region and the development challenges attached, taking stock of organic farming in livestock production, securing animal genetic resources through development and maintenance of regional products.
Dr Annick Gibon
President of the Livestock Farming Systems Commission
References quoted
Gibon A., Matheron G., Eds., 1992. Global appraisal of livestock farming systems and study of their organisational levels: concepts, methodology and results. Luxembourg, AGRIMED Research Programme, European Communities - Commission, Agriculture Series EUR 14479, XIX, 511 pp.
Gibon A., Flamant J.C., Eds., 1994. The study of Livestock Farming Systems in a research and development framework. Wageningen Pers, Wageningen, The Netherlands, EAAP Publication 63, 449 pp.
Gibon, A., Mihina S., 2003. Livestock farming systems in central and eastern Europe. EEAP Technical Series No. 3, Wageningen Academic Publishers, The Netherlands. 255 p.
Gibon A., Sibbald A.R., Flamant J.-C., Lhoste P., Revilla R., Rubino R. & Sorensen J.T., 1999. Livestock farming systems research in Europe and its potential contribution for managing towards sustainability in livestock farming. Livestock Production Science, 61: 121-137.
Dent J.B., Mc Gregor M.J., Sibbald A.R., Eds., 1996. Livestock Farming Systems: research, development, socio-economics and the land manager. Wageningen Pers, The Netherlands, EAAP Publication 79, 360 pp.
Sřrensen, J.T., Ed., 1997. Livestock Farming Systems: More than food production. Wageningen Pers, The Netherlands, EAAP Publication 89, 367 pp.
Gibon, A., Sibbald, A. R., Thomas, C. (Eds)., 1999. Sustainability of Livestock Systems. Livestock Production Science, vol. 61, 313 pp.
Gagnaux, D., Poffet J.R. Daccord, R., Gibon, A, Sibbald A.R., Eds, 2000. Livestock Farming systems: integrating animal science advances in the search for sustainability. Wageningen Pers, The Netherlands, EAAP Publication 97, 430 pp.
Session 3, on "Use of small ruminants and horses for landscape conservation and non agricultural use" was a joint session with the commission on Horse Production and was chaired by M. Scheneeberger from Switzerland. There were four guest papers on "Impact of horses on pastures and consequences for management" by G. Fleurance et al., "Conservation grazing in Scotland: a change in emphasis from stocking rate prescription towards management to achieve conservation targets?" by A. Waterhouse and M. Pollock, "Sustainable use of grassland with sheep in alpine regions" by F. Ringdorfer and "Use of small ruminants for landscape conservation in Swiss Alpine areas" by R. Lüchinger-Wüestet al. These presentations were followed by three short oral communications. The impact of horses and ruminants grazing on plant and wild animal biodiversity, appropriate grazing management in natural protected areas, the effects of sheep and goat grazing on landscape conservation, and subsidies systems linked to environmental conservation objectives, were some of the issues presented and discussed during the session.
Session 5 was entitled "New developments in sheep breeding" being chaired by L. Bodin from France. Guest presentations were "Use of major genes in small ruminants selection: the French examples of as1-cas in goats and PrP gene in sheep" by L.A. Palhière et al., "Taking account of scrapie in the usual genetic improvement scheme of Causses du Lot sheep breed" by G. Perret et al. "PrP genotyping in a flock of Assaf sheep: polymorphisms and relationship with milk yield" by Marcotegu et al. "Characterization of prion protein (PrP) gene polymorphisms of TSE-positive sheep flocks in Germany" by G. Lühken et al., "Breeding goals and new perspectives in dairy sheep programs" by A. Carta and E. Ugarte, followed by oral presentations and poster discussion. Most of the discussion focused on the ongoing programmes in several countries on the genetic control of scrapie with an emphasis on the high costs of these programmes in terms of genetic analysis and loss of genetic gain on productive characters.
Session 6 entitled "Nutrition and feeding of dairy sheep and goats" was jointly organised with the commission on Animal Nutrition and chaired by F. Bocquier from France. Guest papers were: "Relationship between feeding system and goat milk and cheese quality" by R. Rubino and Y. Chilliard, and "Feeding the dairy ewe" by G. Caja et al. The effect of the botanical composition of the grazing pasture on goat milk flavour, nutritional and pharmacological composition of cheese were presented. Regarding dairy sheep, an update was made on recent research acquisitions on nutrient requirements, intake, milk composition, body reserves, nutrition of ewe lambs and pregnant ewes and flock feeding strategies.
During the administrative session, Nacif Rihani from Morocco and Matthias Gauly from Germany were elected as new Vice-President and Secretary of the Commission respectively, in substitution of Alfredo Teixeira and Markus Scheneeberger.
Dr. Dunixi Gabiña, President
Sheep and Goat Commission
At the 54th Annual Meeting of EAAP in Rome the Commission on Pig Production contributed at six sessions of which only two sessions were individual ("Genetic strategies to improve sow fertility" and "Free communications") and four were joint sessions. The high importance of pigs in Italy in general and the heavy pigs for special high quality products was accounted for in two sessions together with the Commission on Animal Nutrition and Animal Physiology. The interest was documented with a respectable number of theatre presentations and posters and also a large, highly interested audience.
Session I: Pieter Knap chaired a session on "Genetic factors regulating feed intake in growing pigs". Uwe Bergfeld (Germany) and Joan Tibau (Spain) presented results of classical analyses of feed intake records from performance testing. Allan Schinckel (USA) and Ilias Kyriazakis (UK) presented invited papers on growth modelling and the prediction of feed intake, with focus on the mechanisms that link genetic potential to phenotypic expression. Ian Wellock (UK) supplemented Kyriazakis's talk with a modelling framework to deal with the effects of social stress. Finally, Peter Ramaekers (Netherlands) presented results from his studies of the effect of food composition on lactation performance of sows in hot conditions.
Session II: The session "Genetic strategies to improve sow fertility" was chaired by Milena Kovac and started with two invited papers. Rainer Roehe (Germany) claimed that piglet birthweight is crucial for piglet survival and can be used as a breeding objective in order to reduce pre-weaning mortality. The goal of selection must be the optimal not the highest individual birth weight. On the other hand, Egbert Knol (Netherlands) suggested selection of sire lines directly for piglet survival, while increasing birthweight may cause reduction of litter size. Helge Täubert and Henner Simianer (Germany) presented genetic parameters for litter traits and selection strategies to improve fertility considering animal welfare. Odd Vangen used data from nutrition experiments to study genetics of weight changes, milk production, and litter size. J. P. Bidanel (France) focused on genetic correlations between litter size, piglet weight, its variability, and piglet survival during suckling period. Bjarne Holm (Norway) reported about the relationship between fertility and production traits in Norwegian Landrace. Spela Malovrh (Slovenia) estimated genetic parameters for weaning-to-oestrus interval. Rob Bergsma (Netherlands) focused on feed intake of sows during lactation.
Session IV: This session began with the formal business meeting in which mainly the organizational preparations of the future EAAP meetings in Bled and Uppsala were presented and main topics to be included in the future discussed. Also, relevant matters concerning the successful realization of future meetings that were discussed in the SAC, like a better recognition of poster presentations in the program and a change of manuscript distribution by the internet, were presented. Finally, the creation of a list of interested organizations in pig production was considered.
In the free communications the following topics found the most interest.
In Session V: This was a joint session with the Physiology Commission on "Tissue development and meat quality: the role of lipids and antioxidants", in which four invited papers were presented under the chair of D. Torrallardona. D.J. Buckley (Ireland) gave an overview on lipid oxidation and meat quality focusing on the chemistry of lipid oxidation and on the mechanisms of antioxidants. C. Lauridsen (Denmark) presented her research on the effect using of rapeseed oil in pig diets with different concentrations of copper and vitamin E. Their effect on meat quality and lipid composition of pork tissues were described, as were their effects on blood parameters of human consumers. Jorge Ruiz (Spain) presented work on dietary fatty acid composition and vitamin E concentration on quality of fresh meat and dried cured ham, both in standard modern genotypes and in heavy Iberian pigs. Finally, S. Gebert (Switzerland) presented research on dietary fat composition and its impact on quality traits of pork tissues.
Session VI: This session was joined with the Commission on Animal Nutrition under the chair of G. Piva. All theatre and poster presentations concentrated on the genetics and nutrition of heavy pigs as well as the production of cured meat products mainly in the Mediterranean countries. The specific physiological preconditions and the production system of the Iberian pig were discussed by J. Aguilera and P. Bosi pointed out the main relevant factors for the production of Parma ham. In seven short communications and a similar number of posters specific factors in heavy pigs were considered.
The members of the Pig Commission had the opportunity to visit one of the pig units of Polinori on Wednesday afternoon near Assisi. The long journey justified with the highly interesting visit of that farm with heavy pigs. We were mainly impressed by the well organized feeding system based on whey coming from a cheese factory near by. The residual energy in the dung is utilized for methane production in a regional fermentation plant.
The program for the Pig Commission at the annual meeting of EAAP in Bled 2004, will focus mainly on questions in relation to large scale pig farms. Included will be topics like longitudinal data utilization, herd modelling for improved management, environmental indicators in livestock systems or antinutritive factors and mycotoxins. Finally there is again the session for free communications, in which any subject of interest can be presented as theatre presentation or as poster.
At the symposium on energy and protein metabolism held two weeks after the Rome meeting in Rostock a working group was initiated that has the harmonization of energy evaluation systems for pigs in Europe as focus.
The 10th Symposium on Digestive Physiology in Pigs (which is held every three years under the auspices of the European Association of Animal Production (Commission on Pig Production) will be held in Denmark in May 2006. J.A. Fernández will be the chairman of the organizing committee. Additional information will be found in the web site www.dpp2006.dk.
Caspar Wenk, President
Commission on Pig Production
caspar.wenk@inw.agrl.ethz.ch
The EAAP meeting in Rome showed that Equine science is reaching a good scientific standard in different areas and is dealing with socio-economic fields which have stimulated a strong number and large panel of delegates.
It became clear that the role and potential of equids as local animal resources and products in sustainable development is important and increasing. This was illustrated by the joint session with the Sheep and Goat Commission " Use of small ruminants and horse for landscape conservation and non agriculture use ". and by the plenary session at the 6th Livestock Farming System satellite symposium held in Benevento prior to the EAAP meeting entitled: "Role of traditional products in sustainable development in livestock farming "
Production of equids in Europe is oriented towards sports and races which constitutes the main economic activity. However the preservation of old draft breeds of local horse populations and the boom in asses in recent years are new emerging fields. The main reason for these changes is the very deep rooted image of Equids in the culture of industrialised countries that generates both non-material products and socio-economic advantages. Equids are still multipurpose animals. They contribute to:
diversification of agricultural activities, products (production of horse meat, more rarely milk) and labour (ploughing, unloading timbers in the forest, harnessing, carriages); utilisation of extensive areas (marginal lands) and preservation of natural areas (natural park of reserves); development of agrotourism in equestrian farms located in marginal areas and periurbanareas. All these activities contribute to maintaining a population in rural areas, creating new relationships between citizens and the rural way of life, preserving rare breeds and traditional socio-cultural life and in addition supplying some animal products.
The main report given in Benevento:"Role and potential of equids in local and animal resources and products in sustainable development "will be published by EAAP in a special issue of technical series.
Welfare and behaviour are emerging areas. They have been studied for the first time in a full session for two main reasons. Race and sport horses are used more and more intensively. Leisure horses are increasing in peri-urban areas and managed by people who are not always horsemen. And there are strong trends towards natural horsemanship and for horses to be considered as companions by new owners. Society is more and more concerned by welfare and new scientific knowledge is required to refine or design new figures and later probably regulations at EU level for horse competition and management. Research is focused on emotional well being and reactivity to determine: the effects of handling during neonatal period or at weaning on manageability and reactivity of foals to check the validity of imprinting theory at birth; the importance of taking into account behaviour during selection; the scientific validity of Parelli Natural Horsemanship as far as good results seem to be met with such a method. Interest in behavioural tests is studied for use in the practical selection of horses in breed to match clients' needs.
In competition activities, performance is rising tremendously more knowledge for maximising exercise and for preventing pathologies are required in equines as in humans. A full session was devoted to this area: optimization of biomechanical abilities, physiology, and metabolism of performance horse in interaction with genetic effects; assuming that osteoarticular pathology can be avoided are requested to maximise performance. Biochemical abilities can be determined now using original devices (accelerometer). Heritabilities of locomotor and physiological traits in some racing (trot) riding disciplines (dressage, jumping) have been determined. Analysis of gene expression in some riding disciplines (endurance) is in progress. Oxygen consumption device for evaluating energy demand and endocrine profile of horse exercising on track are now available for managing exercise in performance horses of some riding disciplines. Attempt to determine interactions between horses and riders during jumping is in progress.
Concentrates can represent 40 to 80% of diet in lactating mare, growing and exercising horses. Nutritive value of concentrates can be evaluated as far as digestion studies using fistulated horses and feed science in equines have reached a good scientific standard as in other farm animals. Proportion of the main chemical components such as starch or protein digested in small vs large intestine for providing either glucose or VFA respectively and amino acids or ammonia respectively can be determined accurately. Digestion of the main feeds components can be evaluated in the different parts of digestive tract using in vivo or/and in vitro promising models. Nutritive value of concentrates can be predicted routinely using criteria, methods and tools which have been designed thanks to extensive digestion studies conducted in equines. New tables of chemical composition and nutritive value of concentrates for Equines have been proposed. Effects of technological process proposed by feed industry on digestion of concentrates can be evaluated using either in vivo or and in vitro methodologies. Such data should stimulate cooperation between research and feed industry at EU level in the very next future
Equid production and utilisation in Italy are very diversified as Equids are used for race, sports, leisure, meat and milk. Italy is involved in the reorganisation of and optimisation of major breed populations namely: trotters, Italian warmblood, Lippizan, Haflinger. But Italian breeders' associations pay attention to heavy breeds (Bardigiano…) devoted either to agrotourism or meat production, and to Asses for milk production in rangeland area for human consumption and cosmetics industry.
New book entitled: "Working animals in agriculture and transport: a collection of some current research and development observations" reporting the papers presented in Cairo at the EAAP Meeting in 2002 has been published by EAAP (Technical series No 6) and was presented at the Rome EAAP Meeting in 2003. The editors of the book are: R. A. Pearson from Edinburgh University( UK), Ph. Lhoste from CIRAD Montpellier (France), M. Saatamoinnen from MTT (Finland) and W. Martin-Rosset from INRA( France).
Interstallions: ( E. Koenen, NL; E. Bruns, G; and Anne Ricard, F).
A pilot project is in progress to estimate the genetic connectedness of warmblood breeding populations in four European countries: Denmark (DWB), Germany (Holstein, Hannover), The Netherlands (KWPN) and Sweden (SWB). The main aim is to increase the understanding of testing and genetic evaluation procedures for sport horses as practised in the various countries. The project will be extended progressively to other European countries later on. Two review papers focused on breeding objectives to test methods are in progress to be published in Livestock Production Science. Internet information focused on :breeding populations, breeding programme, testing procedures and genetic evaluation is in progress as well. All those items are discussed too in the scope of WBFSH seminar: the next one is planned to be held in Dublin on 5-6th December 2003.
Welfare and behaviour: ( M. Kennedy, UK and Eva Soondergaard, DK):
The first meeting of this new group took place in Rome. Three key goals have been decided:
Nutrition: D. Austbo, N. W. Martin-Rosset, F).
This group has been meeting every two years since 2002 as a conference satellite of the Horse Commission focused on Equine Nutrition to extend the discussion which have been previously initiated in the scope of a session implemented in previous EAAP meeting .The topics are determined by a board of European scientists routinely involved in sessions on Nutrition performed every year in the scope of Horse commission.
The second European Equine Nutrition conference will take place in Dijon (France) on January 15-17 2004. It is entitled " The growing horse: nutrition and prevention of growth disorders". It will be organised by ENESAD institution( UPSPS Nutrition et Santé digestive des Herbivores: www.enesad.fr/equinenutrition), contact persons are Veronique Julliand and E. Coudel.
The third European Equine Nutrition conference is planned to be held in Italy on January 2006. The conference will take place in Campobasso University of Molise . The conference will be entitled:" Physiology and nutrition of the mare". Contact person is Nicoletta MIRAGLIA.
The group has decided that the first European conference held in Dijon in 2002 will be published in 2004 as a special EAAP issue in Science series. As a result the second and then the third conferences will be published accordingly the same process in 2004 - 2005 then in 2006 as well .The idea is to publish a series in the field.
Eva Sondergaard has been elected as the second secretary of Horse commission
E. Koenen will present: "the main conclusions of the pilot project conducted in the scope of Interstallions working group" at the next WBFSH seminar planned in Dublin (Eire) on 5-6 December 2004;
W. Martin-Rosset will present: "the key process for going towards a common equine rationing system across the EU" at the next BSAS meeting planned in Cirencester (UK)on 15-16 September 2003;
Nicoletta Miraglia and E. Bruns will attend the IXth WCAP in Porto Alegre (Brazil) on 26-31 October 2003 to present two main reports on behalf of EAAP Horse Commission in the session devoted to Equines. One is entitled "Breeding systems in Europe" by E. Bruns et al., the other is entitled:" Management practices and nutrition systems of equines in EU" by W Martin-Rosset and N. Miraglia.
Several European scientists of the Horse Commission have attended and given oral presentation or/and posters at the following international meetings: ISAE 2003:37th International Society of Applied Ethology in June: Lea LANSADE (F), Eva Sonndergaard (DK); ENPS 2003: 18th Equine Nutrition and Physiology Symposium in June, in Lansing (Michigan): M. Coenen (G), Pat Harris (UK), Veronique Julliand (F), Annette Longland (UK), W. Martin-Rosset (F), Meriel Moore-Colyer (UK), Annette Zeyner (G), Ingrid Verwuert (G). Proposals for cooperation and exchanges between USA (ENP Society and their meetings) and Europe (Horse Commission studies and their EAAP meetings) have been suggested during ENPS business meeting by W Martin-Rosset as the President of Horse Commission using the agreement protocol between EAAP and ASAS. A joint session might be performed between ENP Society and the EAAP Horse Commission in the scope of the next ENPS meeting scheduled in 2005. The topics might deal with Breeding systems, and with Husbandry and Feeding Management in USA and in Europe to promote the understanding of horse management and science on both sides.
W Martin-Rosset, President,
Commission on Horse Production
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