Joint International Symposium on the Nutrition of Herbivores/International Symposium on Ruminant Physiology 2014

Key Topics

• Energy and energetic efficiency: Alternative feed and energy sources from plants
  • Making better use of world-wide low quality biomass resources
  • Cost effective feeding for energetic efficiency
  • Alternative feeds to replace feed grains diverted for ethanol production
  • Manipulating the ruminal genome to optimise these processes
  • The development of alternative technologies and plant species for ethanol production from celluloses to replace the use of grains
• Maintaining our environment in the face of increased demand for food: Adaptation to and mitigation of climate change
  • The adaptability of reproductive mechanisms to ensure species survival
  • The role for genomics in breeding adaptable species
  • The sustainability of herbivore populations in the wild
• Healthier food for a hungry world: Enhancing the quality of food from herbivores
  • Changing fatty acid composition of meat and milk
  • The technology of incorporating value-adding nutrients into products
  • Increasing anti-oxidant levels in animal products
  • Incorporating trace minerals into meat and milk
  • On farm factors and their role in eating quality of meat and quality of milk
  • Lengthening the shelf-life of animal products
• Enhanced animal health and food safety
  • How nutrients influence the immunological competence of animals
  • Current understanding of the nexus between nutrition, microbiology and immunology
  • The potential risk of veterinary pharmaceuticals to food safety
• Gestational nutrition
  • New understandings around the impacts of transition nutrition on the dam
  • Foetal programming
  • New understandings on the acquisition of the ruminal biome by the neonate
• The science behind animal welfare: Healthier animals in a hungry world
  • The impact of welfare standards on production efficiency
  • The current status of our knowledge of stress physiology
  • Novel indices of stress status
  • The cost of introducing new welfare imperatives across the globe