Page 2 - National Poultry News

Animal welfare standards and guidelines under review
Poultry Industry Calendar of Events
2020
JUL 7 – Annual Poultry Club Show Ipswich Showgrounds, Ipswich, QLD
JUL 20-22 Poultry Science Association (PSA) Virtual Annual Meeting poultryscience.org/PSA-Annual-Meeting
NOV 4-5 – Poultry Xpo, Stratford, Canada www.poultryxpo.ca
2021
FEB 9-10 – Australian Poultry Science Symposium, University of Sydney, NSW www.apss2021.com.au
APR 11-13 – Poultry Information Exchange/Australasian Milling Conference (PIX/AMC), Gold Coast, QLD www.pixamc.com.au
JUN 21-23 – European Symposium on the Quality of Poultry Meat and XIX European Symposium on the Quality of Eggs and Egg Products, Krakow, Poland www.eggmeat2021.com
AUG 8-12 – World Poultry Congress, Paris, France www.wpcparis2020.com
AUG 16-18 – World Poultry Science Association (WPSA) – Cambridge UK www.wpsa2020.org
How to supply event details: Send all details to National Poultry Newspaper, PO Box 387, Cleveland, Qld 4163, call 07 3286 1833 fax: 07 3821 2637, email: design@poultrynews.com.au
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EGG Farmers of Aus- tralia is set to put for- ward its views on the care of livestock on Australian farms to a panel currently review- ing the nation’s animal welfare code.
• Production issues in- cluding restructures of the industry, low returns and disease risks.
tralia work with govern- ment agencies and bring to its attention issues that will develop and improve the industry.
The three-member pan- el was appointed by the federal government to review the introduction of new animal welfare standards and guidelines that will eventually gov- ern all livestock farming across the country.
• Costs relating to the long-awaited animal wel- fare standards and guide- lines, and the resulting lack of investment and debt in the industry be- cause the guidelines have taken six years to reach this point, with no out- come.
Years ago, when the system was such that eggs were sold and con- sumed in the state they were produced, state legislation was more straightforward.
Egg Farmers of Aus- tralia is expected to meet with the panel in July or August.
this process has so far taken six years because without any updated guidelines on animal care, investment and growth in the egg indus- try has been impeded.
Discussion points Egg Farmers of Australia will raise with the panel in- clude:
Examples are the dif- ferences between states in egg stamping – as per the table below – control orders, auditing respon- sibility and salmonella enteritidis testing.
The poultry industry had been waiting for up to six years for the guidelines to be imple- mented.
Egg Farmers of Aus- tralia is the peak voice of Australian egg farm- ers who operate caged, free-range and barn-laid farms.
• Egg Farmers of Aus- tralia’s position on key farming issues.
New guidelines and standards on the care of poultry will give egg farmers clarity and cer- tainty on how they can develop their farms into
The three-member pan- el will hear submissions
• The status of the egg industry and the egg mar- ket.
It is hoped that states implement the Australi- an animal welfare stand- ards and guidelines for poultry in a timely man- ner, and that following endorsement of the Ag- riculture Ministers, that the legislation is placed on the forward program for actioning.
the future.
It’s unfortunate that
from many key animal industries before finalis- ing the proposed guide- lines for government ap- proval.
• The need to retain caged egg farming in Australia – a key issue which will be emphasised to the panel. Consumers would face egg shortages if supermarkets contin- ued a push against caged egg farms. According to the CSIRO, 40 percent of egg sales in Australian supermarkets are caged eggs, and the box mar- ket also makes up a large amount of egg sales from the caged sector. Without caged eggs, we would see a shortage of eggs nation- wide.
Roll ahead a few dec- ades to a system where a number of businesses have multiple locations or suppliers in a range of states and are produc- ing eggs under different rules.
• Egg market impacts and trends.
• Economic and social impacts facing the egg in- dustry.
Harmonisation
• The latest CSIRO Sus- tainability Framework for egg production.
If only it was as sim- ple as adding notes to a melody.
Egg Farmers of Aus-
State
When egg stamping is compulsory
WA
When producing eggs at any volume.
NSW and ACT
When producing 240 or more eggs perweek. Numbers below this are only exempt when eggs are sold at farm gate OR for fundraising activity where the eggs will be cooked.
SA
When owning 50 or more egg producing birds OR selling eggs at a market OR supplying a food business.
QLD
When producing eggs at any volume.
VIC
When owning 50 or more egg producing birds.
TAS
When eggs are sold by egg producers to an egg business OR a food business OR at a market OR by way of wholesale.
Egg stamping table. Source: Australian Eggs Egg Stamping Guide
Fast and accurate sexing method developed for chickens
* from P1
makes it possible to sex birds quickly with the protocol including label- ling the chicks, process- ing the samples and ac- curate call of genotypes.
then verified by exam- ining the sex of each bird upon dissection once the trials had been completed.
and lab consumables. Overall, Associate Professor Wu and his team have developed a sexing protocol that can be used to sex chickens in a cost effective, ac-
cally for large-scale use where hundreds of birds are needed, such as in nutrition and disease challenge trials.
with the ability to make use of sexed birds in their trials.
The DNA extraction procedure takes around 30 minutes with the ba- sal part of chicken feath- ers, and the PCR pro- cedure takes about 70 minutes for 100 birds.
The cost of this DNA sexing method was also minimal with an esti- mate of approximately $1 per bird for reagents
curate and fast way. This method can be implemented practi-
It is estimated that 500 to 800 birds can be DNA sexed within a day using this procedure and will provide researchers
This will help to de- crease the variation in experiments, resulting in a higher power to detect responses of the birds to the treatments under investigation.
The fact that they were able to successfully ex- tract and use the crude DNA from feathers also makes this method fa- vourable because it is a less invasive technique than extracting blood.
The assay was vali- dated and the accu- racy confirmed by the HRM-sexing of 1318 broiler chicks that were used for nutritional and disease challenge trials performed at the Uni- versity of New England, and the results were
Normalised HRM curve to identify male and female birds from feather crude DNA.
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