Inaugural Collaboration: EAAP and WPSA Unite for a Joint Session on Slow-Growing and Dual-Purpose Genotypes in EU Farming Systems

During the 75th Annual Meeting there will be the first important cooperation between EAAP and the World Poultry Science Association (WPSA): the creation of a joint session titled: “Slow-growing meat-type and dual purpose genotypes for conventional and alternative farming systems in the EU”. The EAAP Poultry Working Group (PWG), led by Katarzyna Stadnicka , was instrumental to organize the session in cooperation with WPSA. The chairs of the session will be Massimiliano Petracci (University of Bologna, Italy) representing WPSA and Gürbüz Daş (FBN Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology Dummerstorf, Germany), member of the EAAP working group. Two keynote speakers are already planned, Cesare Castellini (University of Perugia, Italy) and Anne Collin-Chenot (INRAE, France). The session will deal with the use of slow growing meat-type chickens and dual-purpose genotypes in alternative farming systems in the EU. A genotype is considered adaptable if its performance is stable enough in different environments. As it is crucial to harmonise common criteria and procedures in EU, the session will particularly focus on the approaches used in different EU countries and bodies (e.g. European Chicken Commitment, ECC) to characterize and assess slow-growing and dual-purpose genotypes. In this view, not only performance traits, but also the assessment of functional traits in challenging conditions, such us adaption to outdoor environment, immune response to pathogens, thermoregulation, locomotion activity, and land use etc. need to particularly be considered. Thus abstracts are welcome to address performance and functional traits of slow-growing and dual-purpose genotypes as well as discussions on the characterization and standardization of these genotypes.