AASV Board Approves Position Statements; Drops Printed Proceedings

November 20, 2013 — 

The American Association of Swine Veterinarians’ Board of Directors held its fall meeting on October 3 in Des Moines, IA. During the meeting, the members approved three position statements crafted by the association’s Pig Welfare Committee. The documents highlight the position of the organization on piglet processing activities including permanent identification, tail docking and teeth clipping, and castration. The statements are available on the AASV website.

In other activities, the Board also decided to discontinue printing the AASV Annual Meeting proceedings, starting with the 2015 meeting in Orlando. There was some resistance to this, but proponents felt that making the decision to discontinue in 2015 would provide time to 1) receive member feedback, and 2) allow time to prepare for the change. AASV WILL print and ship the 2014 AASV proceedings as in the past. After 2014, AASV will continue to format the proceedings and provide them in electronic format, but won’t print and ship the paper book. This will save at least $22,000 a year in printing and shipping costs (not to mention a few trees). It will also enable the use of color charts and graphs within the proceedings papers.