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President Jean François Hocquette INRA, France jean-francois.hocquette@inra.fr Vice-Presidents Sven König (Germany) Andreas Foskolos (UK) Industry Representatives: Karsten Maier, Belgium info@uecbv.eu Cătălin Necula, Ireland cnecula@Alltech.com |
Secretaries Massimo De Marchi Ray Keatinge Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board (UK)
Young Scientist: Akke Kok (The Netherlands) |
The Cattle commission its work is sectoral oriented, i.e. it deals with dairy and beef husbandry, including young stock, fattening bulls and suckler cows. It focusses on science, extension and innovation in those sectors and the surrounding chains. The strategies of the Cattle Commission are to organise an interesting program, support young scientist’s activities, to organise regularly a debate session and to continue and enhance cooperation with other organisations. The application of know-how is a major goal, which is ideally combined with innovative aspects related to the development of cattle husbandry.
The joint sessions with the international breeding associations Interbull and ICAR, and the Genetics commission, have become a structural and successful part of the program. The Young train session, organised together with the EAAP Young Scientist Club since 2014, seems to be appreciated by the starting scientists. Two available awards provide an additional challenge to the participants. In recent years, the cooperation with the American Dairy Science Association (ADSA) has been strengthened, while several sessions are linked to EU projects. The contacts with the European Grassland Federation resulted in the first sessions at EAAP devoted to the grassland area, which is a step forward to integrate know-how on animals and grazing and grass as a major feed. However, the economical and societal pressure on the cattle sector, for instance in relation to the after quota developments in the dairy sector and the product quality and health discussions in the beef sector, urges to further strengthen links with companies and industries. Societal wishes will be regularly addressed in the sessions, like reduction in methane emission related to climate change, the image of grazing of cattle, comfortable housing and the needed improvement in longevity, fertility and udder health.
The Cattle Commission takes in recent meetings care of 11 sessions, which deal with 20 to 25% of the total number of accepted abstracts. It requires quite some time input of the commission members. The commission is composed of a president, two secretaries, two vice-presidents science and innovation and one vice-president from a company / industry. As proposed in the EAAP Forward Looking Report of Cled Thomas et al., 2013, the Cattle commission and Cattle Network working group decided to integrate their tasks. The working group her task is mostly devoted to networking and communication with the cattle sectors and companies. The cattle website is an important tool to support this. In this context, the coordinator of the working group will be vice-president communication and networking of the Cattle commission. The new structure is widely seen as a very positive development. Especially the updating of the cattle website needs immediate attention. The members of the commission chair the sessions at the annual meeting, often together with a co-chair from outside the commission.
Topics (sessions) planned for next EAAP congress in Belfast, UK (in 2016), are:
– Creating an enduring dairy sector post quota (with ADSA)
– Improving quality and sustainability of beef production (with Cattle Networking working group)
– Dairy and beef replacers (substitution of animal products) + Debate
– Amazing grazing (with European Grassland Federation)
– Feet & Legs and claw diseases (with ICAR/Interbull)
– Housing systems for cattle (with EU-project Optibarn)
– Value creation through precision livestock farming (with EU-project LPF)
– Towards sustainable grassland adaptation of dairy and dual-purpose cattle (with EU-
project Core-organic)
– Longevity (with Physiology commission)
– Genotype plus Environment – integration for a more sustainable dairy production system (with EU-project GplusE and Genetics commission)
– Young Train – Dairy innovation in research and extension (with EAAP Young Scientist Club)
(these sessions can be adapted in coming months according to the number of submitted abstracts or other reasons)
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