- Vision [1]
- The purpose of the committee is to maintain and ensure industry involvement in the advice to Federal administration in matters
pertaining to poultry health and to the administration of the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP). The committee represents
cooperating State agencies and poultry industry members and serves as a liaison between the poultry industry members and the
United States Department of Agriculture on matters pertaining to poultry health.Action by General Conference Committee - The
World Organization of Animal Health (OIE) defines a compartment as one or more establishments or other premises which operates
under common management practices related to biosecurity and which contains an identifiable animal subpopulation with a distinct
health status with respect to a specific disease/diseases, the committee feels that NPIP participating primary egg and meat-type
and turkey breeding chicken establishments could be compartmentalized.Since Salmonella Enteritidis (SE) is an egg-transmitted
agent and has been implicated in egg-associated human outbreaks of Salmonellosis, and the National Poultry Improvement Plan
(NPIP) routinely monitors and certifies chicken breeding flocks under its U.S. SE Clean Classification for egg and meat-type
chicken breeding flocks and hatcheries, and virtually all of our trading partners require baby poultry and hatching eggs originated
from breeding flocks and hatcheries free of SE, and many of the State egg quality assurance programs include requirements
for purchasing baby chicks from hatcheries and breeding flocks that participate in the NPIP's U.S. SE Clean Program and the
Food and Drug Administration has instituted a SE prevention program for talbe-egg pullets, and layers. The delegates from
the 40th biennial Conference of the NPIP believe there continues to be a need for research in the area of reduction of SE
prevalence, and encourages the poultry industry to continue preventative measures and vigilance toward the reduction of SE.Since
the NPIP routinely monitors commercial broilers, roasters, cornish game chickens, and turkeys and table-egg layers for H5
and H7 subtypes of avian influenza under its U.S. H5/H7 Avian Influenza Monitored program and these various avian influenza
certification programs are recognized by all of the United States export trading partners as one of the premier notifiable
avian influenza surveillance and certification programs in the world, and they are consistent with OIE guidelines for avian
influenza surveillance, the delegates from the 40th biennial Conference of the NPIP went on record requesting the U.S. Department
of Agriculture to continue to sufficiently fund the NPIP avian influenza surveillance programs and 100 percent indemnity when
needed.Since avian mycoplasmosis may be an industry disruptive and economically significant disease in poultry, and the National
Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP) routinely monitors chicken and turkey breeding flocks under its various avian mycoplasma classifications,
and the standard plate agglutination test, and the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) are official screening tests
of the NPIP for avian mycoplasmas, and the hemagglutination inhibition (HI) test is used to evaluate serum samples that react
with the ELISA, or plate antigens, and in some cases both the plate antigen and the commercial ELISA have indicated the flock
is negative while the flock was deemed infected because it was identified as infected by a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
based procedure and the supply of plate antigens have been short on several occasions in the past year or so, and the destruction
of primary and multiplier breeding flocks are very costly economically and very disruptive to the breeder in other ways, particularly
when the diagnosis is questionable, the delegates from the 40th biennial Conference of the NPIP believe there is a need for
research in the area of avian mycoplasma diagnostics to aid in the determinationof a more definitive diagnosis.Since the National
Poultry Improvement Plan is a highly successful health certification program that has both a national and an international
impact on trade and disease control, and the National Poultry Improvement Plan includes various programs for the monitoring
and surveillance of poultry flocks for Salmonella pullorum, Salmonella gallinarum, Salmonella enteritidis, Mycoplasma gallisepticum,
Mycoplasma synoviae, Mycoplasma, meleagridis, avian influenza, and notifiable avian influenza and the control thereof, and
the success of any program is highly dependent upon the coordination, management, and staffing of all of its parts and the
funding that it receives, and the current physical location of the NPIP, located near the Poultry Diagnostic and Research
Center of the University of Georgia, the Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory and the Richard Russell Research Center of
the Agriculture Research Service, U.S. Poultry and Egg Association headquarters, United Egg Producers headquarters, and the
contributions in salmonella diagnostics made by Dr. Doug Waltman, Georgia Poultry Laboratory have contributed to the overall
success of the program, and the National Poultry Improvement Plan currently does not have a line item in the APHIS budget
to insure that the necessary funds for covering sufficient operating and staffing; i.e., hatchery inspections, laboratory
reviews, state program reviews, and outbreak epidemiology are available without having to compete for the same with other
programs in Veterinary Services and divisions within APHIS, the committee feels that USDA, APHIS, should include a line item
in the budget covering the operating costs of the National Poultry Improvement Plan.
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