The poultry industry has always been innovative and interesting, and the last twelve months have been no exception. Variations in feed raw material pricing, food scares and the global financial problems will certainly keep it so, and it looks as though we are going to continue living in ‘interesting times’. On the plus side, the poultry sector, and its associated research, continues to lead the way in many aspects of animal science, and the exciting seminar and conference opportunities in 2009 are testament to that. A prime example is that this year sees the 17th European Symposium on Poultry Nutrition being held in Scotland, with participants and delegates expected to attend from all over the world. I shall certainly be there, as will the rest of the WPSA board, and look forward to meeting WPSA members new and old. The organising committee have done a wonderful job and, as the dates coincide with the Edinburgh festival, there will some great opportunities for seeing the best Scotland has to offer at this time of year.

The Journal has also been given the opportunity to launch a ‘special’ edition in June regarding small scale family poultry farming. This is an important aspect of the WPSA’s work with developing countries, and has been the focus of several meetings recently. As a result our new President, Bob Pym, and I have put our heads together and come up with a group of papers specifically relating to this topic. Our continued strong links and involvement with the FAO gives us a great opportunity to explore this much-needed area, as it affects the lives and well-being of so many men, women and children living in poorer countries. I hope you will all enjoy this special issue and learn something new about what poultry science has to offer these families from a nutritional, social and economic perspective.

We are also fortunate to be able to publish John Hodges thought-provoking paper regarding capitalism, how it has affected the poultry industry and how big businesses may work in the future. This was the keynote paper given at Brisbane, and stimulated much comment and discussion among those who heard it. I trust it will give you all food for thought!

Lucy Tucker

Editor

Poultry production has achieved outstanding biological and economic performance in the last 60 years as exceptional leadership harnessed science and business in the public interest, thus contributing powerfully to cheap, abundant food and improved quality of life. But unacceptable negative effects are now evident, adding to the threatened collapse in Western society that is being provoked by an unsustainable culture of materialistic consumption and self-interest. A supreme desire for profit dominates all public decisions and resource use. The balanced market economy system has been distorted into ‘Elite Capitalism’. In agriculture, this deformed economic model combined with ‘Elite Science’ threatens both food security and the social fabric of world society. Not only are established boundaries of economic behaviour being breached but, in the process, traditional boundaries are being violated in rule of law, justice, species integrity, community and morality. The current Elite Science and business model is unsustainable and must be reshaped before it leads to major catastrophe. Leaders in the poultry sector are challenged to again show their innovation and intellectual and moral courage by re-designing the poultry sector as an example for the whole food chain to ensure global food security, a sustainable socio-economic future for both rich and poor and the survival of civilized society.

Inadequate supply, exorbitant prices and diversion towards using cereal grains for biofuel production, particularly maize, has led to a constant search for alternative energy sources for poultry and other non-ruminant species. The abundant availability of cassava in certain regions makes it a good alternative to maize and other cereal grains. Cassava root meal is rich in carbohydrate but low in protein and all other nutrients, whereas, cassava leaf meal is a moderate source of protein. Results of studies to evaluate the replacement of cereals with cassava products in poultry feed show wide variability due to differences in origin, variety, plant maturity at harvest, ecological conditions of plant growth and processing methods. Cassava products contain a wide range of cyanogenetic glycosides, particularly linamarin and lotaustralin. The level of hydrocyanic acid released from the cyanogenetic glycosides limits the utilization of cassava, but with proper processing, the dietary inclusion level of cassava meal can be increased for economic poultry production. This paper reviews the nutrient composition of cassava and its uses as a substitute for more conventional ingredients in poultry diets.

Among various factors affecting broiler meat quality, the genetic attributes play an imperative role. The growth hormone gene imparts anabolic effects on skeletal muscle growth and myostatin. The growth and differentiation factor-B gene negatively regulates the myogenesis to determine the body mass. This review concerns the role of growth hormone, myostatin and other such important candidate genes affecting development and differentiation of skeletal muscles. The relationships of higher weight gain with meat quality traits with pH, water holding capacity, extract release volume, collagen solubility, texture and muscle proteins has been ascertained. It is inferred that fast growing broilers give relatively poor meat quality. It is concluded that there is a strong need for genetic manoeuvring regarding silencing of myostatin gene for better qualitative and quantitative broiler meat yields.

The increasing costs of conventional feedstuffs like corn, soybean meal and fish meal for poultry diets is pushing the need to find less expensive alternatives. Bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia) is an ancient grain legume crop that originated in the Mediterranean region, but now can be found in many countries around the world. It has many favourable characteristics, such as having high yields and being resistant to drought and insects. Bitter vetch (BV) is a good source of metabolisable energy (13.57 MJ/kg), protein (240 g/kg) and minerals especially Fe, Cu, K, P and Cl. It contains small amounts of fat, but is high in non-structural carbohydrates (617.8 g/kg). Its amino acid profile is very close to soybean meal, including being a good source of lysine. Given all of these qualities, BV has good potential as a feed source for poultry. However, raw BV contains anti-nutritional factors such as canavanine, protease inhibitors, tannins and lectins that have been shown to have detrimental performance effects as a feed source for broilers and laying hens. Attempts to process and detoxify these substances through soaking in water, acidic and alkali solutions, boiling and autoclaving have met with limited success. Hence, before bitter vetch can be considered as a viable alternative feed source for poultry, more work is necessary to establish suitable techniques for removing greater amounts of these anti-nutritional compounds. This paper reviews the current body of knowledge on bitter vetch as a potential feed source for poultry.

The development of the global poultry meat market has, in recent years, been marked by rapid, unexpected and complex changes. The poultry meat industry is one of the most competitive international sectors and is currently in its mature stage of development. In order to maintain their competitive position on the market, companies have to constantly prove themselves by supplying innovative products and processes.

This review focuses on recent trends in Slovenia, and the aim is to demonstrate how the present situation in Slovenia fits into the general trends within the European Union.

The article concentrates on the results of the primary quantitative research, which was carried out via individual personal interviews. The sample consisted of 600 Slovenian poultry meat consumers, aged between 18 and 65 years. Special attention was paid to the origin of meat in the consumer's decision-making process. The positive perception of poultry meat and the importance of its origin in the purchase-decision-making process were evident from the survey and knowing meat origin plays a key role in the purchase-decision-making process. The trends in poultry meat consumption, which were determined in our study of the European poultry meat market, were thus confirmed by the quantitative research, which was also carried out in Slovenia.

The gastrointestinal tract is a complex milieu as a result of interaction between dietary ingredients and the intestinal bacteria. Following the European ban on the use of in-feed antibiotics, research has focused mainly on the potentially beneficial activities of the intestinal microbiota. Fermentable carbohydrates, or ‘prebiotics’, such as non-digestible oligosaccharides, are considered to have beneficial effects on the composition and activity of the indigenous microbiota, which can enhance the resistance of the host against colonisation of pathogenic bacteria in the GIT. Only a limited number of prebiotics has been tested in broilers that include fructo-oligosaccharides, inulin, mannan-oligosaccharides, alpha gluco-oligosaccharides, isomalto-oligosaccharides, different kestoses and lactose along with its derivatives. This review provides an overview pertaining to the potential impact of prebiotics on the intestinal bacterial population in broilers and summarizes the data regarding the role of prebiotics in preventing the colonisation of enteropathogens especially Salmonella spp., Campylobacter spp. and Clostridium spp. Moreover, the influence of prebiotics on the intestinal bacterial fermentation profile, particularly short chain fatty acids, ammonia and lactate, is also discussed. Prebiotics have been found to affect the intestinal bacterial population particularly elevating the caecal count of Lactobacillus spp. and Bifidobacterium spp. The effect of prebiotics on the intestinal bacteria is also evident in terms of change in the total concentration or relative proportion of short chain fatty acids. The ability of prebiotics in controlling the colonisation of different enterpathogens especially Salmonella spp., Clostridium perfringens or Campylobacter spp. showed inconsistent results depending upon the available literature.

A face to face survey was carried out in randomly selected 124 layer producers in 7 most important egg producing cities in Turkey between September 2006 and May 2007 in order to investigate the financial impacts of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) outbreaks in Turkish commercial layer-egg producers. The financial analyses were divided into 3 periods, namely ‘before the outbreak (October 2004-January 2005)’, ‘during the outbreak (October 2005 - January 2006)’ and ‘after the outbreak (February-May 2006)’.

Comparing the egg prices ‘before the disease’ with the situation during the outbreaks, the egg prices dropped from 0.091 YTL/egg to 0.038 YTL/egg. On average, the rate of capacity utilization, enterprise incomes and profits declined by 40%, 75% and 200% respectively. 14.5% of the producers had to stop production for about 5 months. 64.5% invested on average 6,648 YTL/enterprise to improve bio-security. The debts of the enterprises increased 3-4 folds due to the disease outbreaks, with 87% of the producers having to outlay an extra 153,426 YTL on average from their personal funds.

In the ‘after the outbreak’ period, the prices and sales of table eggs recovered and even exceeded those of the ‘before the outbreak’ period, and the producers who managed to continue production appeared to be better off.

Since in-feed antibiotics (IFAs) are being taken out of broiler diets around the world, beginning in Sweden in the year 1986, the search for alternatives to replace IFAs has gained increasing interest in animal nutrition. Gut microflora appears to be the target for IFAs and alternatives to exert health benefits and some growth-promoting effects. In this review the effect of six kinds of alternatives to IFAs on gut microflora is discussed and their working mechanisms and growth-promoting effects are reviewed. This review focuses on mannanoligosaccharides (MOS) as alternative to antibiotics using research results obtained by various authors in recent years.

Family poultry (FP), which make up around 80% of poultry stocks in many developing countries of Africa and Asia, are still important. However, FP farmers are facing many constraints, including high mortality, mainly due to Newcastle disease and currently also to the highly pathogenic avian influenza in many countries since its occurrence in Asia in late 2003. Significant improvements in FP production systems can be achieved through well-designed and implemented information dissemination programmes that endow FP farmers with necessary knowledge and skills. The setting-up of poultry networks that enable FP farmers to acquire and share knowledge, views, experiences as well as research and development results in FP keeping in developing countries is discussed. Ways to improve the efficiency of information dissemination through poultry networks by taking into account the socio-cultural and economic environments of targeted FP farmers are also explored.

The present review work aims at determining the potential usefulness of indigenous naked neck (INN) chicken (D. Nana) for poultry production in a hot-humid climate. INN chicken has good heat dissipation mechanism and well adaptive to harsh tropical environment and nutrition, and is highly resistant to disease and superior to indigenous full-feathered and exotic egg-type or exotic naked neck counterparts in terms of growth rate, egg production, egg quality and meat yield traits. It can produce double the standard number of eggs under improved nutrition and management conditions. Crossbreds of INN with exotic chicken can perform even better than that of exotic chicken in respect of productive and reproductive traits. Consumers prefer the meat and eggs of INN chickens for reasons of pigmentation, leanness, taste, firmness, and they are also used in special dishes. INN chicken prices are typically higher compared with those of products from exotic stocks. There are a very few published papers on the molecular aspects of INN chickens, although this is essential to determine genetic distance or relationship within or between INN chicken and indigenous full-feathered (IFF) varieties (D. nana) for future breeding plans. Therefore INN strains may be a promising and worthy genetic resource for the development of a breed or strain through selective or crossbreeding program suited to Bangladesh and in other countries where similar environments and socio-economic conditions exist. Thus, the present review provides genetic and performance information on INN chickens which may be useful for further improvement of tropical breeds.

The World’s Poultry Science Journal is indebted to Prof J.A. Castello, Prof D.K. Flock, the French Branch, Dr S. Cherepanov and Prof N. Yang for the translations of these summaries.