“If a country wants to develop export capacity, they need to pay attention to the southeast Asia region. Today, this region has a significant portion of the growing world population that is requiring more animal protein,” remarked Ricardo Santín, president of the Brazilian Association of Animal Protein, during his keynote address on “Redeveloping of Poultry Export Capacity in Latin America with the Reopening of the Market” at the la Cumbre Avícola Latinoamericana (Latin American Poultry Summit) program held during the 2021 IPPE Marketplace Week. La Cumbre Avícola Latinoamericana is sponsored by the International Poultry Expo (IPE), part of the International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE), WATT Global Media and the Asociación Latinoamericana de Avicultura (ALA).
Santín also emphasized the importance of having many factors converge to have a robust industry within your country. He noted that understanding ingredient markets, disease prevention, integration, and the development of value-added products becomes very important when planning to expand capacity and efficiency.
As part of his keynote address on the “Poultry Health Status in Latin America: What, How, Where and When There Will be Solutions,” Dr. Rafael Fernandez, consulting poultry veterinarian from Aves, LLC, discussed how biosecurity plays an integral part of any poultry health program. He observed that biosecurity is key to allowing vaccination programs to work effectively, and without it, an operation will be wasting resources. Fernandez also remarked that diagnostic laboratories are essential to identifying infectious agents and that Latin America needs to strive to have rapid testing for diseases. This will reduce the reliance of using U.S. laboratories for diagnostics, further delaying timely action to manage diseases.
The Latin American Poultry Summit also featured the results of two research projects sponsored by ALA and the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association. Dr. Rebeca Zamora from the University of Costa Rica presented on the “Development and Validation of Commercial Broiler Chicken Welfare Programs” and discussed her research on implementing outcome-based programs and how the programs improve overall welfare in commercial broiler production systems. Marconi Italo Lourenço da Silva from the State University of São Paulo presented on “Welfare and Productivity of Broiler Chickens in Enriched Environments,” where he discussed his research observations on how environmental enrichment can improve measurable outcomes in poultry welfare.
