Archive for July 16th, 2008

The Australian Poultry Cooperative Research Centre (Poultry CRC) based at the University of New England has won a major international award from the World’s Poultry Science Association (WPSA).

The Association’s Industry/Organisation Award was presented to the Poultry CRC’s Chairman, Dr Jeff Fairbrother, and Chief Executive Officer, Professor Mingan Choct, during the closing ceremony of the 23^rd World’s Poultry Congress in Brisbane earlier this month. The award, presented every four years at the Congress, was in recognition of “an outstanding contribution to the development of the poultry industry”.

Dr Roel Mulder, General Secretary of the WPSA, said there were many organisations throughout the world doing great work in advancing poultry science, but the Poultry CRC was “well ahead of its nearest rival for the award”.

Twenty researchers and staff members from the Poultry CRC’s headquarters and from UNE’s Poultry Research and Teaching Unit attended the Congress at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, which ran from the 30^th of June till the 4^th of July and brought together about 2,500 leading poultry scientists from around the world. It was the first time that the event has been held in Australia.

“This award, and the CRC’s role in this preeminent gathering of the world’s poultry researchers, acknowledges the work of the CRC to date,” Dr Fairbrother said, “and should deliver confidence to producers and Australian governments that a top research organisation has the Australian poultry industry’s future in hand.” Professor Choct said the award was “truly an honour for the CRC and all its participants”.

The Poultry CRC is a joint venture between numerous academic, industry and government institutions, designed to perform research (often collaboratively) and to use the results to enhance the competitiveness, vitality and sustainability of the Australian egg and chicken meat industries. Its researchers have made important advances at local, national and international levels.

Professor Choct said that this major award, and the fact that 33 of the CRC’s researchers had given presentations at the Congress – many of them by invitation – demonstrated the respect that the CRC and its researchers had earned around the world.

Earlier this year Professor Choct was awarded the international poultry industry’s Gordon Medal when he presented the 25^th Annual Robert Fraser Gordon Memorial Lecture at the 2008 conference of the British Society of Animal Science in Scarborough, UK. The Gordon Lecture is organised by the R.F. Gordon Memorial Trust in association with the UK Branch of the WPSA. (See the posting on this Web site for Wednesday 14 May.)

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows Dr Jeff Fairbrother (left) and Professor Mingan Choct after receiving the award for the Poultry CRC.