Poultry Science—1976*

Poultry Science—1976* ROBERT E.

COOK

Department of Poultry Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina 27607

T

CONCERNS First, let's mention the concerns. The first of these is one that has been discussed at our Poultry Science Meeting now for a number of years and it is the decrease in emphasis on Poultry Science and the demise in the number of Poultry Science departments in the universities and colleges represented by our Association. During the past two decades, the number of Poultry Science departments has declined by approximately one-half the original number. Today, we have 20 departments operating as Poultry Science departments with another 20-24 that operate actively in some combination with Animal, Dairy or as Animal Industry departments. We have often discussed the reasons for the apparent decline in number of departments and have attempted to analyze the decline in emphasis on Poultry Science that we have observed. It seems to me that our present departmental structure should remain approximately at our present level providing we as individuals and as faculty members do not lose sight of the fact that the only reason for us to exist as Poultry Science Departments is to support the growth and development of the poultry industry in our states, provinces and areas served. We must maintain a strong industry orientation and tailor our research, extension and teaching programs to meet the needs of the poultry

T h e Presidential address given at the General Session of the 65th Annual Meeting of the Poultry Science Association, Inc., Kansas State University, Manhattan, August 5, 1976.

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with Poultry Science that I would like to share with you. In addition to these concerns, I would like to spend the majority of my time discussing the business affairs, the publication of the Journal, and the future of our Poultry Science Association.

HE Poultry Science Association is pleased to be a guest of Kansas State University for our 65th Annual Meeting. The arrangements for the meeting have been excellent, the dormitory rooms are comfortable, the cafeteria is starting off with excellent food, and the meeting rooms are in close proximity. All of the arrangements certainly point toward an excellent meeting. I would like to also express my appreciation to the Officers, Directors, and especially to the Executive Secretary and Editor, of our Association for their excellent cooperation during this past year. Your Board of Directors has been an active and a working Board during the year. We have had a number of meetings with either the entire Executive Committee or with one or more of the Officers who have been attending other poultry industry meetings. This has given us an opportunity to discuss the affairs of the Association and other matters that might improve the professional standing of our Association and permit us to operate in a more sound financial manner. Several people reminded me that the President's comments for any Poultry Science meeting should include some philosophy, some inspiration, and any other items for the good of the organization. Since I am not a very good philosopher and tend to be even less adept at inspiring people, I am not going to try to get very involved in these areas. I do have a number of concerns that I feel are very important to those of us working

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R. E. COOK

ner in organizations that control all phases of production from the raw product, "hatching eggs," through production, feed milling and processing to the finished product of either eggs or poultry meat. With this type of organization, there is a demand for more and more poultry science majors to help operate and manage these coordinated or integrated production operations. We should be placing a heavy emphasis on undergraduate poultry science programs to supply baccalaureate students for service in the industry. The demand is there, and it is our responsibility to train and educate young men and women for positions of service and management within the industry.

Secondly, the Extension phase of our programs is very important in maintaining rapport with the industry. It is my opinion that the days of the generalist in Poultry Extension in the areas where poultry is important economically are gone forever. We have replaced the generalist with the specialist to work either on an industry or discipline basis. Furthermore, I believe that the days of the full-time extension specialist have passed their prime and we now need to look at an individual with combined extension-research responsibilities to adequately serve our dynamic industry. For example, each specialist with a subject matter or discipline assignment for extension educational programs should also have research responsibilities to conduct the problem-solving research program designed to back up the extension educational program. If an extension program is based upon a service, then it should also include an educational program designed to eliminate the need for the service.

The second main area of concern that I would like to discuss briefly with you is our need for a team approach in conducting our poultry science programs. If research and extension programs are to be really effective and fulfill the needs of our industry in the future, they will need to be developed on a team basis. We need more programs that are designed to help solve major problems of the industry. The reproductive problems of the turkey and broiler industries might well serve as an excellent example. We need research programs in basic physiology to better understand the endocrine relationships controlling egg production, fertility and hatchability, and the immunological factors affecting sperm transport, livability, storage and freezing. We also need practical studies in handling breeder chickens or turkeys for maximizing reproductive fitness. A team approach to combine all of these factors into a combination extension-research program would do wonders to improve the reproductive efficiency of meat type broilers and turkeys. Other examples are: 1) waste management; 2) chicken catching and loading; and 3) hatching efficiency. Many other examples could be given in the research and extension areas that will require and be best solved by using the team approach.

Third, let's turn our attention to our teaching programs. This is an area that has been greatly neglected by many of our poultry or animal science departments and largely written off as lost by many. The poultry industry throughout the world is rapidly becoming organized in a coordinated or integrated man-

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industry. I feel that we can best accomplish this by maintaining well-balanced programs. This means (first) research that spans the gap from very basic to the applied to help solve the problems of the industry in your area. Each department should tailor their research program to meet the needs of their particular industry including the various classes of poultry. A balance must be provided between basic research to build our base of fundamental knowledge and an applied research program to help the industry solve the problems that they are confronting every day. This is certainly easier to accomplish in departments that are fully integrated with research, teaching and extension all included.

POULTRY SCIENCE—1976

POULTRY SCIENCE BUSINESS AFFAIRS AND PUBLICATION I would now like to turn my attention to the "state" of our Poultry Science Association and discuss with you some important matters that the Executive Committee will present to you at our business meeting on Thursday. As you are well aware, during the past several years our Poultry Science Association

has experienced rapidly escalating costs of publication of our Poultry Science Journal. This has greatly increased the costs of our overall Association business. Records that are maintained by our Association indicate that we have lost money as an Association in five out of the past seven years. The losses during the first three of these years were in the $2,000 to $12,000 range. The records show that we operated in the "black" during 1973 because we paid for only five of the six issues of the Journal that year. The extra issue had to be paid for in 1974 which resulted in a loss of $43,568. In 1975 we again paid for only five issues and showed a profit. During the current year (1976) we are paying for eight issues and our projected loss is $43,950. With these losses, we have nearly depleted the Association's reserves and must either find other sources of revenue or look at alternate methods of handling the publication of the Journal and the affairs of our Association or we will be bankrupt in a short period of time. We currently have $36,744 in savings which means that our reserves will be depleted in one year if we continue our current level of spending and maintain the same income. With this bleak picture, your Executive Committee feels that we are obligated and must present some strong alternatives to the membership on method of publishing our Poultry Science Journal. During the year, we have spent considerable time exploring various methods of handling the affairs of the Association to permit us to operate within our income. One of the obvious ways to accomplish this would be to increase membership dues, subscription rates, and/or page charges. If we assume the anticipated deficit of $43,950 for 1976 and a projected deficit of $16,450 for 1977 as estimated by your Executive Committee, and if we maintain our present level of membership, we will completely deplete our savings of over $36,000 and still require an increase in dues of $5 per member

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The third main area of concern is the fact that poultry textbooks for teaching our poultry science courses are almost nonexistent. There is little incentive with the number of poultry science students that we are teaching in the world today for anyone to write and keep up-to-date good poultry textbooks. The financial rewards are not there as an incentive and the textbooks that we have available are certainly results of labors of love. Possibly our Poultry Science Association should consider helping to underwrite or encourage the development of textbooks in critical areas. The last area of concern that I would like to discuss briefly with you is the need for accountability in our colleges and universities in teaching, extension and research programs. We have often been guilty of interpreting academic freedom to mean that we should not be accountable for our activities. I am sure you all realize that this time is past and that we must be accountable for the funds that are appropriated to our Poultry Science programs. Research publications are a must for the research worker. If you have a project that has not yielded publications with some regularity you should look closely at establishing some benchmarks. Extension programs must have identity and be designed so that they can be evaluated, and teaching programs should provide an optimum number of well-trained and educated students for service in the poultry industry.

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R. E. COOK

Poultry Science Dairy Science Animal Science

Members

Dues

Page charges

1500 2000 3800

$25 $16 $20

$35 $30 $30

Your Executive Committee has been seeking and searching for alternate ways of handling the business of our Association and the publication of the Journal to live within our present budget. We want to describe to you today and will present to the membership at our annual business meeting on Thursday alternate methods of handling the business affairs and the publication of the Journal effective January 1, 1977. The alternate method would transfer both the business affairs and the publication of the Journal to the office maintained by the American Dairy Science Association (A.D.S.A.) in Champaign, Illinois, and Mr. Claude Cruse, currently Executive Secretary of the A.D.S.A., would be named as business manager for our Poultry Science Association. This alternate method of handling our Association affairs will have advantages and undoubtedly will require adjustments for you members. Dairy Science established the business office to handle their business affairs in 1965 and initiated journal composition and set-up in 1969. They have contracted with three asso-

ciations or societies to handle their business affairs and have extended our Poultry Science Association an invitation to join. The four societies are: The American Dairy Science Association, The American Society of Animal Science, Society for the Study of Reproduction, and the Weed Science Society of America. Details of the business arrangement will be discussed at our business meeting on Thursday and a bulletin board has been prepared and is in the lobby of Derby Center to help you become familiar with the system. The bulletin board includes financial statements of our Association, the business agreement between our Association and Dairy Science, the agreement on publishing our Journal, letters from associations or societies affiliated with the system, and examples of the minor format changes that will be necessary to adapt our Journal to the format and IBM composing equipment currently being used by the Dairy Science Association. Briefly this change would entail the handling the business affairs of PSA for $4 per member or subscriber per year, set-up and composition costs on the P.S.A. Journal of $23 per page, printing costs of $27 per page, for a total of $50 per page, as compared to our present cost of $58.90 per page for printing the Journal. We currently have 1430 members and 1700 subscribers making a total of 3150. This would cost our Association $12,800. This would largely replace the current cost of operating our Secretary-Treasurer's office. Mr. Cruse, as business manager, would handle membership lists, dues, notices and collection, all subscriptions, correspondence of the Association, and financial matters. The Journal would be published by the business manager for an estimated total cost of $50 per page that would include set-up and composition at $23 and printing of $27. This estimate is based upon the high estimate of current costs of all four Journals published by A.D.S.A. The set-up and composition

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from $25 to $30 per year to break even. An increase of $5 in page charges raising the level from $35 to $40 per page will accomplish about the same thing. An additional increase of $5 in dues and page charges will be required in 1977 to remain even. For your use in comparing costs, a $5 increase in dues for 1500 members equals $7,500 income and a $5 increase in page charges equals $8,500 per year. These increases will not permit us to replace any of the depleted reserves. Also for comparison, the dues, page charges and subscription rates for the other animal societies are:

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POULTRY SCIENCE—1976 costs alone will save our Association $5.90

P.S.A. would be effective January 1, 1977.

per page, the difference between our $28.90

The Journal publication would start with the

current cost and $23 as quoted by Mr. Cruse

January, 1977 issue. 1

and the Dairy Science Association. This alone

I urge all of you to discuss this proposal

amounts to a savings of $13,865 per year.

with the other officers, directors and me

If we consider the total estimate of $50 per

throughout the week, review the material on

page, our potential savings would be $38,500

the bulletin board, and attend the business

per year. With this alternate system no over-

meeting on Thursday to consider this matter

prints would be supplied. A savings of ap-

that is so important to the future of our

proximately

Poultry Science Association. A copy of these

$38,500

in

composition

and

remarks describing our alternatives for han-

other areas would create a total savings of

dling the business affairs and publication of

$41,200 for 1977. With these savings, we feel

the Journal will be posted on the bulletin

that we can operate the Association during

board for your review.

1977 in the black without any change in fee

Personally, I have enjoyed serving as your

structure. This would not permit us to replace

President, and look forward to working with

any of the depleted reserves.

you throughout this meeting and in the future.

If you as members elect to adopt this system at the business meeting on Thursday, the change to the business manager and to

1. Subsequent arrangements changed this date to the May issue.—Editor.

the Champaign, Illinois headquarters for our

NEWS AND NOTES GEORGIA NOTES Phase one of an experimental research and teaching complex at the University of Georgia, Athens, has been completed. The $1.7 million facility includes a service building with a classroom, office, laboratory, feed premix room, egg grading and washing room, and hatching room with four incubators; environmentally controlled house; caged layer house; management studies house; battery house for 3-5 week feed and growth testing; and three laying and breeding houses. NATIONAL CHICKEN COOKING CONTEST One of 7 males in a field of 51 contestants, Thomas Parvis, Upper Montclair, New Jersey, topped all entries at the National Chicken Cooking Contest with his "Sunshine Chicken." First prize was $10,000. This is the second time in the history of the N.C.C.C. that a man has outcooked the ladies. Parvis is an industrial chemicals salesman with Union Carbide. On his way to winning the cookoff title in his state earlier he had to beat out a number of other contestants—including his wife!

Rose Chang Alexander, a health inspector from California, captured second price of $5,000 for her recipe "Fried Ginger Chicken Thighs." She teaches Cantonese cooking, is writing a cookbook, and once owned a restaurant. Ella Marie Malloy, a secretary from the state of Washington, took third prize of $3,000 with her "Pickled Pepper Chicken." Lauralee Fugazzi of Denver, Colorado, gained fourth place and $2,000 for her recipe "Chicken Spinach Souffle." Nancy Ann Thompson, Bangor, Maine, received the final prize of $1,000 for her "Chicken Maharni." The N.C.C.C. is under the auspices of the National Broiler Council. Anne Nesbitt is the organizer. Mazola, Ac'cent and various poultry industry firms finance the contest. HUBBARD NOTES Carl "Doug" Helms, a Hubbard Farms Management Specialist, has been assigned additional responsibilities in the Sales Division. He will handle Hubbard sales and service in six Southeastern states—Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina and

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printing and a small savings of $2,700 for