Nutrition
(WG 2)

The Poultry Nutrition Symposia has attracted an increasing number of delegates being 567 in Edinburgh in 2009 compared with 73 delegates in Denmark in 1977. The structure of the Poultry Nutrition Symposia are organised in a special way in order to stimulate the delegates to be active in the discussions of the scientific topics presented by invited speakers. There are no parallel sessions and in each session 3-4 speakers are covering different aspects of a topic within one hour. Thereafter, the audience is divided into a number of discussion groups that will discuss topics raised during the speaker session. All participants will then meet again and there will be discussions taking place between the speakers and the rest of the participants for another hour. This structure assures a very good communication between participants and challenges the speakers. Delegates find this an attractive feature at the Poultry Nutrition Symposia.

WG2 is always active in the planning of the Nutrition symposia in co-operation with the local branches and organising committees. WG2 holds regular annual meetings in connection with the Nutrition Symposia or during the European Conferences and World Poultry Congresses.

At present WG2 has 29 members representing 16 European countries. It meets annually and its main function is to set up the meetings held every two years under the title ‘European Symposium on Poultry Nutrition’. So far, 21Symposia have been organised. During the years several sub-committees has been generated under the WG in order to solve specific problems. The work of the subcommittee dealing with feed energy values resulted in a publication: “European Tables of Energy Values for Poultry Feedstuffs”, which has been quite successful and have become an important tool for many poultry nutritionists. The WPSA equation for predicting ME in compound feeds has continued in use in the EEC for control. A third edition of the European Tables for Poultry Feedstuffs was published in 1989 including a Multilanguage index in 15 languages. In 1992 the WG2 published the European amino acid tables having a similar format to the energy tables.

A phosphorus sub-committee has been established during the WG2 meeting in Edinburgh 2009. The main goal of the group will be to review and clarify the position regarding available phosphorus and requirement recommendations.

These Symposia have a novel format. Each session starts with several plenary presentations, the delegates then discuss these papers in small groups and then reassemble for a final plenary session where the papers are discussed along with comments from the speakers. These Symposia thus demand a lot of effort from the delegates but are very popular and attract a large audience from all around the world. This Symposia series can increasingly be considered to be the major poultry nutrition forum on a world basis.

The Working Group also publishes on an occasional basis information of interest to poultry nutritionists.