Nutrition Advisory Group
 

Minutes from the General Membership meeting at the
NAG/AAZV/AAWV Meeting in Omaha, NE

Written: 17-18 October 2005  Posted: 03 November 2005
Written by Mike Maslanka
AZA Nutrition Advisory Group General membership Meeting

The meeting was attended by most of the conference registrants.  It was a lunch meeting, which seemed to work well to increase the turnout over past general membership meetings.

 1. SCARF (BL)

            The Sue Crissey Animal Nutrition Residency Fund was created in Sue’s memory to provide money to support a zoo nutrition residency at a qualified zoological institution.  At this point, the group working on SCARF is an ad hoc committee in the NAG.  Twelve zoos currently fit the criteria to be considered for the residency, but we are still in the process of raising funds to support the first resident.  The SCARF subcommittee has been charged with several tasks (after the SC meeting), and will continue to progress to the point that they will accept applications from qualified zoos.

 2. Zootrition Software

            The program has been transferred to St. Louis.  Version 2.5 will be available the week of 24 October 2005, with the ultimate goal for version 3.0 to be a web-based version.  WAZA has offered support of this program for 5 years.  There have been discussions about potentially linking the Zootrition program to ZIMS. 

 3. AZA Nutrition Session.

            Next year AAZV overlaps with AZA.  Do we have an interest in proposing a session at AZA?  Potential ideas included: use of novel feedstuffs, or how standardized guidelines fit into daily management.  This topic also was discussed at the conference subcommittee meeting.

 4. New Members.

            The NAG gained 5 new members this past year.  We had several people nominated for the SC, and Kimberly Ange-Van Heugten, Ann Ward, and Leslie Ziegler were chosen to replace Mark Edwards, Wendy Graffam, and Mike Maslanka on the SC.

 5. New SC Officers.

            Jason Williams was selected as the new NAG Chair.  Ann Ward was selected as the Vice-Chair.  Mike Schlegel was selected as the secretary.  The treasurer position remains to be decided, based upon institutional support for the treasury.

 6. Conference Committee.

            This year we had 62 registrants for the conference, including invited speakers.  We had excellent support from our sponsors.  The conference committee was composed of: Mike Maslanka, Mike Schlegel, Mark Edwards, Ann Ward, Wendy Graffam, Barbara Lintzenich, Eduardo Valdes, Ellen Dierenfeld, Barbara Toddes, David Hellinga, and Cheryl Dikeman.  This conference success is due to the hard work of everyone involved.

 7. Treasury.

            As of 31 August, the balance in the NAG account was $37,652.98.  All debits and credits during the past year have been conference and/or SCARF related.  This number obviously rose as we gained conference registrants and sponsor gifts.

 8. Subcommitees.

            Many of the subcommittees as they existed have been disbanded for lack of interest and/or activity.  The subcommittees that remain are: conference, website, nominating, technical papers, standardized guidelines, and SCARF (ad hoc).
            Website. This is a member resource.  Please submit any ideas you have in order to improve it for you.  We are looking to do a complete re-build of the content soon.  We will be examining a shift of info from the member sonly to the public section of the site to help people find useful info more easily.  The BCS workshop slides may be included on the site, and well as possibly the older infant diet notebook.  Proceedings will be up there asap. 

 9. Standardized Guidelines.

            Standardized guidelines are replacing husbandry manuals.  If you are working on a nutrition chapter for a husbandry manual now, might as well stop.  The format and additional info on the SGs is available on the AZA website.  The focus right now in on mammals and the goal is to have them all complete in 2005.  Ann Ward, Mark Edwards, and Howard Frederick are the three people on the committee to facilitate review of the chapters.  Reviewers are needed for the 140+ potential sections that will be submitted in the near future.  The goal with these is to improve the level of care provided, over and above the USDA standards. 

 10. European / American NAG.

            The European group has 10 people who are currently acting as nutrition advisors to 20 TAGs.  Considering that this group serves a huge area and 28 different languages, this is a major endeavor!  Folks in Europe hope to collaborate on joint guidelines for any animals that they can, and seek any ideas to help this cause (contact Andrea).

 11. 2007 Meeting.

            We do not have a location for the 2007 meeting at this point (AAZV has not selected a location).  It has been beneficial to us to meet with the vets (at the same time).  They have attended our sessions and we have attended theirs.  It was suggested that we might get a vet liaison to help us come up with topics of interest (this could be a member of the conference committee).  It certainly did help this year that we were RIGHT next to them this year, and that should be a goal in the future.  The general membership should contact any member of the conference committee in order to share ideas for wetlabs, workshops, and sessions.  The SCARF wine and cheese went over very well, and may be a part of future conferences as well.

 12. Horsemeat Issue.

            We do not know enough at this point to do more than speculate about the future of USDA inspection at horse slaughter plants.  We do have USDA representatives at this conference, and we will seek what information we can from them.  Please watch NAG Notes for future updates.

 13. Current Advisor List.

            If anyone has updates for the SSP and TAG advisor list, please shout at Mike.  We will try to post this on the website for review and comment. 

 14. Logo.

            We passed around a logo idea, and welcome other ideas and sketches.  Each conference year, it seems that someone asks us for a logo, and we don’t have one.  It would be great to work through this issue and come up with a logo for future use.