Report on the Family Poultry Workshop held during the XXIII World's Poultry Congress

Abstract

Networks to support family poultry production systems have been ongoing for around 30 years. This paper identifies the main groups involved and details their work. The future role of the work of the networks was examined during a participatory workshop held with professionals from the networks at the World Poultry Congress 2008. Workshop participants agreed that family poultry contribute significantly to the lives of millions of poor households throughout the world and made a commitment to advance ‘Poulet sans Frontieres!’The paper recommends that an overarching network is required that would provide a forum for scientist information exchange, development of standard protocols and subsequent comparison of results. This network would also speed the dissemination of results and technologies identified to improve poultry production, which can then be passed to poultry keepers. WPSA was identified as the lead organisation for a new network in concert with a number of the networks and agencies closely involved (INFPD, IRPC, DNSP and FAO). It is envisaged that these proposals would be available for discussion by the small-scale family poultry farming (SSFPF) community in 2009.