Ethanol and Feed the Focus of Western Nutrition Conference

Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food

The rapidly expanding demand for ethanol feedstock and the impact this growing market will have on animal feed is at the centre of the 2007 Western Nutrition Conference.

The 28th annual edition of the conference will take place from September 25 to 27 in Saskatoon.

The conference always attracts a diverse audience, according to one of its co-chairs, Dr. Murray Drew.

"It's primarily one of the meetings that brings together industry people with university people. A lot of researchers at western universities will participate," Drew said.

The 200 to 250 delegates expected to attend the conference will examine and discuss the impact of increasing ethanol production on animal feeding from a number of different perspectives.

"We've tried to put together a program that addresses a wide swath of issues in terms of how this is going to affect the feeding of animals," Drew noted. "We think of ethanol as something that goes in cars, but of course what's going to happen is that the wheat and barley we used to feed to livestock will also now be going to ethanol production, so we're going to have to deal with byproducts of ethanol in a bigger way than before."

Sessions addressing that topic include: Competition for Food, Feed and Fuel - The Great Opportunity with the Biorefinery Concept; The Impact of Changes in the Ethanol Production on the Nutritional Value of Wheat Distillers Dried Grains; and Wheat Based Distillers Grains for Growing and Finishing Cattle.

"I think that it's going to be very interesting in terms of the ethanol production," said Drew. "We've brought together a significant number of speakers from both the U.S. and Canada on the topic."

The conference will be kicked off with the J.M. Bell Memorial Lecture, which this year will examine "The Role of Research in Advancing Animal Agriculture in the 21st Century." The lecture will be delivered by Dr. John Black, who, Drew notes, has had an illustrious career in animal nutrition in Australia.

"We sometimes feel that we do research forever and it never really amounts to anything," Drew stated. "(Black's) talk is going to be on how research has directly affected the way that we feed animals and produce meat."

Among the many technical sessions are quality assurance in the feed industry, feed mill management strategies, taste aversion in grazing animals, and new developments in feeding high performance pigs and chickens.

"We've got some interesting speakers coming from across North America and around the world, so I think it will give people a different perspective than they normally have on the way we feed animals," Drew said.

The Western Nutrition Conference is a joint project of the University of Saskatchewan and the Animal Nutrition Association of Canada. Complete information on the 2007 edition is available at http://www.westernnutritionconference.com/.

For more information, contact:
Dr. Murray Drew, Associate Professor
Department of Poultry Science, University of Saskatchewan
Phone: (306) 966-2367
E-mail: murray.drew@usask.ca
Website: http://www.westernnutritionconference.com/