Page 18 - Australian Pork Newspaper

ADELAIDE | November 17-20, 2019 APSAlutely awesome conference in Adelaide
Stuart Wilkinson presented the International APSA Travel Scholarships to Jamil Faccin and Kiah Gourley.
Rebecca Athorn of Australian Pork Limited, Pat Mitchell of PIC, Ashley Norval formerly of APL and now at DanBred and Lechelle van Breda of APL had a great time at the APSA conference dinner.
Stéphane Jonvel, Phatanee Leksrisompong and Roger Campbell caught up between scientific presentations.
The APSA Medal was presented to Megan Hayes by Darryl D’Souza of SunPork Solutions.
Page 18 – Australian Pork Newspaper, December 2019
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and implementation of cutting-edge technologies, with some game-changing discoveries and ideas re- vealed.
Following on from the keynote speakers in most sessions were dozens of shorter presentations from researchers, students and pork industry profession- als, continuing with a similar topical theme to the foundation laid by the keynote speaker.
These short but sweet 10-minute presentations ensured research out- comes were delivered in a timely and easy to under- stand format, yet still with enough time for questions and interaction with the audience.
Highlights came from
everywhere and of par- ticular note was the ex- ceptionally high standard of research and forward thinking displayed by the students who show plenty of promise for the future of the pork industry.
Speaking of students, the APSA Medal is awarded based upon the best pres- entation given by a student or scientist with less than five years’ industry expe- rience at their first APSA conference.
This year’s APSA Medal winner was Megan Hayes of the University of Mel- bourne for her flawless presentation on ‘Positive human contact reduces avoidance behaviour of gestating sows during routine husbandry proce- dures’.
Students and research-
ers are also encouraged to submit an abstract of their research for the con- ference, either through an oral presentation or a poster.
The balance of abstracts submitted are presented in the form of posters.
APSA’s Poster Award is presented to the creator of an engaging and eye-catch- ing poster detailing relevant and interesting research.
This year saw an ex- tremely high calibre of posters presented from across the industry, with the winner of the award being Australasian Pork Research Institute Limited Chief Scientist and CEO John Pluske’s poster titled ‘Feeding larger diameter pellets to pigs in lacta- tion does not improve the weaning weight of piglets
born to gilts but decreases the removal rate of pigs in the post-weaning period’.
While this is a poten- tially tumultuous time for industry, with pig prices still recovering and now the threat of ASF on our doorstep, a great many positive points for indus- try were presented during the conference thanks to world-leading science of- ten being done right in our backyard.
You should save the date now for the 2021 confer- ence as the week beginning on Sunday, November 14.
In coming months, we will be running coverage in APN on a number of presentations from APSA 2019, so stay tuned to see some of the event’s high- lights.
Daniel Tomlinson
The food on hand throughout APSA was a highlight for the author. The networking dinner at La Boca Argentinian restaurant comprised sublime cuts of Australian lamb, beef and pork.
The 2021 APSA committee, minus Stuart who snuck into the middle.
The 2019 APSA committee did a fantastic job organising and running a classic conference.
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