WPSA

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Branches

I have suggested to the General Secretary that we make an approach to the poultry industries of Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar with the intention of starting new branches. With these three "on board" almost all the countries of South East Asia would have a branch. There are also possibilities in Central Asia and further west. We are working on this, but I'm sure you will understand, it takes time and effort.

Conferences and Meetings

Half way between successive World Poultry Congresses the two Federations', Europe and Asia Pacific stage their own major conferences. The European Poultry Conference is to be held in Stavanger, Norway and our own 10th Asia Pacific Poultry Conference is to be held on Jeju Island in South Korea. Dates are as follows: EPC 23-27 June 2014 and APPC 19-23 October 2014.

Organisation for APPC2014 is well advanced and this conference promises to be the best ever. I encourage you all to attend. Contact addresses for both conferences are:

www.epc2014.org and www.epc2014.org 

During APPC2014 our three working groups will be holding their committee meetings. All branches should select representatives to attend these meetings. The APF committee meeting will also meet. Again each branch should ensure they have a representative at that meeting.

Last November the Vietnam branch hosted the 5th World Waterfowl Conference in Hanoi. This was a very successful event attracting delegates from many parts of the world.

Website

If you have been keeping up with Federation affairs you will know that I have been working on developing a website for our members. The site has been live on the World Wide Web since 18 December 2013. I did notify all branch secretaries and asked them to pass this information on to branch members. I hope this did happen so that this is but a reminder. It is intended as an interactive website for you to use in your day to day work. Please have a good look at it and use the contact box to ask for a log in password. Once you have this you will be able to access the "members only" parts of the site.

Something for Ratites enthusiasts

Up till now biologists have believed New Zealand's native bird the Kiwi's closest relatives were the Emu and Cassowary. Now new DNA testing techniques have shown the Kiwi is in fact most closely related to the long extinct Madagascan Elephant bird. This was a flightless giant standing up to 3 m tall and weighing 275 kg. It is rather bizarre since the Kiwi is fairly small, 2 or 3 kg. It turns out that the Kiwi and the Elephant bird are both descendants of small flying ratites thought to have originated in Antarctica tens of millions of years ago. Fossils with distinctive ratites head and beak support this. At that time dinosaurs had become extinct and mammals were still small rodent like creatures, allowing the new ratite arrivals to develop into large flightless herbivores in Madagascar. But the opposite happened in New Zealand where the new arrivals found competition with a large flightless ratite herbivore already there called the Moa (now extinct). So the Kiwi developed as a small flightless insect eating ratite.

(Mitchell et al., Science, 344 (6186): 898-900) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/898 

(from Fairfax NZ)

Working Group 1 Small Scale Family Poultry Farming (SSFPF)

A SSFPF symposium is being planned for inclusion in the 10th APPC programme. Details will be announced at a later date. It is interesting to note also that the United Nations has designated 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming. This is very relevant to our WG and strengthens our promotion of small scale poultry farming. It would be good if there could be more cooperation between all the groups working in the field of poverty reduction through SSFPF. This may well be a point for discussion during the symposium.

Newsletter

This is the first newsletter for a long time. I hope to make it more regular from now on. It would be very helpful if branches could submit news items to the newsletter. Perhaps each branch could appoint a communications officer to take on this responsibility. The newsletter will be circulated to all members for whom we have email addresses. It will also be available on our website www.asiapacificpoultry.com. Submitting news items can be done via the website.

Dues

I don't really like to talk about money, but sometimes it has to be done. Several Federation member branches are behind in payment of their affiliation fees. It would be great if your committees could discuss this and make the payments that are due. The fees are not at all high, only 20 cents US per member per year, but of course if it is not paid it does mount up. Please check on this. Check the website (Organisation>About Us>Officers) for our Federation Secretary's contact details.

Thanks

To all those who have taken on voluntary roles in WPSA, whether as branch committee members, Working Group Presidents, whatever, a big thank you for your great contribution to making the Asia Pacific Federation of World Poultry Science Association branches a stronger and more vibrant organisation.

Kind regards to all members.

Alan

AM Gibbins

President

Asia Pacific Federation, WPSA