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54th EAAP Annual Meeting, Rome, 2003 | ||
| Number 49 | |||
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The 54rd EAAP Annual Meeting was held from 31 August to 3 September 2003 in Rome, Italy and was an excellent occasion held under the patronage of the Ministry of Agriculture, several Universities and Research Institutes and the Italian Breeders' Association. Special thanks and congratulations are due to the Organizing Committee with representatives drawn from many Italian organizations involved in Animal Production which was chaired by Professor Giancarlo Rossi with Professor Sergio Gigli as Secretary. The Scientific Advisory Committee chaired by Professor Alessandro Nardone with Professor Bianca Moioli as Secretary included representatives from many leading universities throughout Italy. These groups were supported by New Team who provided the Secretariat and Wageningen Academic Publishers who produced the Book of Abstracts. Many individuals were involved in ensuring that this was a highly successful meeting.
The Palazzo dei Congressi provided a comprehensive location for the meeting where all activities were contained with pleasant well equipped meeting rooms, lunch and coffee facilities plus areas for relaxation and informal discussions. It was easy to move from one study commission to another, to view posters and take part in ancillary activities.
In addition to the oral and poster scientific sessions the normal business, planning, publication and organizational activities of EAAP including the Council and General Assembly were carried out. There were also high quality social events including the Opening Ceremony and Conference Party, Welcome Cocktail, Conference Dinner, Farewell Dinner and Accompanying Persons' Programme.
The special programmes included the Round Table, Satellite Symposia, Graduate Courses, Working Groups, meetings of INTERBULL, Rare Breeds International, Editorial Boards, Task Forces and Post-Conference Tours. All of these were organized with efficiency and convenience. We all appreciated the provision of a pass for public transport for the week.
The unique blend of Italian history, culture, buildings, culinary arts and hospitality made us all feel welcome. All the participants have reason to thank the organizers for an excellent occasion in line with the high standards of previous EAAP Meetings in Rome with the normal high scientific standards and the additional pleasure of being in one of the oldest cities of Europe. Traditional Italian hospitality provided participants with many elegant social occasions in remarkably ancient buildings and outdoor settings. Congratulations and thanks are sent to the organizers for a first class occasion.
Rome 2003! Forty years after the first EAAP Annual Meeting to be held in Italy we are again invited to meet in the Eternal City. We are here to discuss animal genetics and animal physiology in the homeland of Lazzaro Spallanzani together with animal nutrition, management and health. Further, the farm animal species with which we are now concerned have been extended to include poultry, rabbits, fish and domestic pets as shown by the list of abstracts. Welcome to the Annual meeting 2003!
Everybody knows that Rome was most famous for the She-wolf, for lions, for horses and even for elephants all of which are, so far, still excluded from our discussions. In our changing world which is progressing towards liberation from food shortages we need to ask some basic questions in the context of organising more and more specialised scientific meetings.
Is the EAAP Annual Meeting necessary? Is it original? Is it fruitful for the progress of animal science and animal production? Your presence here is a positive answer to these questions and an encouragement for the Association, for the EAAP Council and Board and for the host- organizers to whom, in your name, I express my best thanks.
We remain challenged by several emerging issues including productivity, animal feed and food safety, animal welfare, and regulatory bans on animal feeds which are not environmentally friendly. We also hear alarming words such as patenting, surveillance, monitoring but also emergency relief for animal farms! Today, we often encounter a less deferential attitude towards scientists and leaders in society.
In the face of some pessimistic views, we try to be more professional in our responses to pressure groups that sometimes are driven wrongly by an unfriendly media. As was said here in Rome by the Fathers of the European Union, Alcide de Gasperi, Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schumann in 1951: "We are here to debate, even to oppose, but to decide on the future" to which we may pertinently add "the future of Animal Production and the EAAP".
We are here for the participants to present and to discuss new results and their consequences for the life of the animals; for the life of animal producers; and finally to the benefit of the consumer. We are here to confront new experiences, to engage in co-ordinated research, extension and education. We are here to welcome new member countries to our Association.
Our scientific and technical world still requires and will continue permanently to need creativity - that remarkable fifth instinct that sets the human race apart. That is why EAAP tries to invest in people, particularly in specialised speakers drawn from our specialist fields and by encouraging international exchanges with our sister Associations. We also invest in people by attracting and associating more closely with scientists, and especially young scientists, from the South East of the Mediterranean Basin.
I declare open the 54th Annual meeting of the EAAP in Rome 2003. Enjoy meeting your co-worker and even your competitors. Make new friends. Be energetic and have a good Annual Meeting for 2003.
Aimé Aumaitre, President of EAAP
Next: Future EAAP Annual Meetings