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"Experientia docet" - Experience is the best teacher

It has been a relatively quiet year for SASAS so far, without the buzz of congress preparations.

All Africa Conference on Animal Agriculture

As I am sure you are all aware of, SASAS is co-hosting the 8th edition of the All Africa Conference on Animal Agriculture in collaboration with our sister society in Botswana in Gaborone from 26 to 29 September 2023.

A total of 130 poster presentations have been accepted. A further 145 abstracts requesting oral presentations have been received; however as there are limited slots available for oral presentations, approximately half will be accepted as oral presentations and the remainder will be accepted as posters.

To date approximately 300 delegates have registered for the conference, from all over Africa, with a good representation of SASAS members.

So far 3 keynote speakers have accepted, namely;

Prof Ed Rege (Founder and CEO of ECI-Africa and Emerge Africa)

Dr Moetapele Letshwenyo (World Organization for Animal Health Regional Representative for Southern Africa)

Prof Appolinaire Djikeng (International Livestock Research Institute Director General).

A preliminary programme has been posted on the congress website. Visit the website https://aacaa8.com/ for more information and to register.

SASAS Congress

At the last AGM, members from Limpopo expressed interest in organising a SASAS congress. To this end they have now made a formal approach to council.

AGM

As the SASAS congress has been postponed for this year, we have had to make other arrangements for an AGM and awards ceremony. The SASAS AGM and awards presentations that will take place on 18 August 2023 at Kemin Industries – Olifantsfontein.

More information on the program will follow shortly.

The terms of office of some SASAS councillor members will end in 2023, namely; Trevor Dugmore (President), Schalk Cloete (vice-president), Linde du Toit, Helet Lambrechts and Cuthbert Banga. Following on from the nomination process, elections are scheduled from Monday 7 August to Friday 11 August 2023. The elections will be via the e-voting process on the SASAS website. All paid-up full members of SASAS are encouraged to vote. Members need to be registered on the SASAS website to be eligible to vote. Those who have not yet registered are requested to then renew their membership details for 2023 on the SASAS website.

The newly elected councillors will be announced at the AGM. We had planned to include the student quiz and debate finals as part of the days programme, however, unfortunately insufficient entries resulted in the cancellation of this year’s competition.

Animal Frontiers

SASAS was invited to prepare a guest society issue, for the October 2023 issue of the Animal Frontiers journal.

This issue is in the publication process with four papers from SASAS members and an introduction by Prof Norman Casey, the guest editor of the issue.

SASAS Journals

The SASAS council held a special meeting to discuss our journals. This was an informative exercise, especially on the growth of the South African Journal of Animal Science. Statistics from 2010 to 2016 show that there was a consistent 400 to 500 pages published annually, excluding special editions. From 2017 to 2022 there was a consistent 900 to 1000 pages published annually with the number of issues increased from 4 to 6 per year in 2017. The number of papers published from 2010 to 2016 averaged 48, while the number published from 2017 to 2022 averaged 100. Papers published by South African authors was 21 per volume from 2010 to 2016 and 22 per volume from 2017 to 2022, indicating that the growth of the journal was from papers submitted by international authors.

Our consistently improving citation rating over the years, to the present 1.1 indicates the acceptance of our journal internationally.

It was quite apparent that the editorship of the journal cannot be considered a part time position and it was decided to review the editor’s contract and also to provide administrative support to the editor, as dealing with administrative issues and emails was too time consuming.

We have been consistently informed that our journal is undervalued relative to other international journals. Therefor it was decided to increase the page charges to a more realistic figure. The page charges have been increased to:

International submissions: $ (USD) 750 for the first 10 pages and $ 75 per page thereafter.

SADC residents: R 5000 for the first 10 pages and R 500 per page thereafter, while SASAS members (principle and/or corresponding authors must be SASAS members) are offered a discounted rate of R 4000 for the first 10 pages and R 400 per page thereafter.

Applied Animal Husbandry and Rural Development

The meeting felt that there is a niche market for this publication, but that a direction must be decided upon. Possibly broaden the scope of the submissions to include case studies, review papers, letters to the editor and invited editorials, amongst others. Papers in this journal would not be subject to the same rigorous statistical procedures as applied in SAJAS, however, the science must be of a credible standard. Further discussion/workshopping needs to be conducted as to the future of this journal. As always, we welcome positive suggestions from our members.

ISAE Workshop

The International Society for Applied Animal Ethology (ISAE) are hosting a 2-day hybrid workshop on Farm Animal Behaviour and Welfare from 6 to 7 November 2023 at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. The theme of the workshop is: “Bringing Animal Welfare to the SADC Region” and it will be hosted by ISAE in close collaboration with the Universities of Pretoria, Stellenbosch, and Venda. A formal announcement will follow shortly.

NSTF

SASAS was invited to join the National Science and Technology Forum. We trust our membership of the NSTF will add benefit to our society and its members.

Members

Sadly we have lost the following animal scientists who made a significant contribution in the animal science sector:

Dr Ernie Kemm: an animal nutritionist specializing in pig nutrition at the ARC: Irene until his retirement in 1998 passed away on the 27th of May 2023. Dr Kemm edited the book “Pig Production in South Africa” and was the manager at the Animal Nutrition of the ARC.

Dr Jan Petrus Pienaar, an animal nutritionist specializing in ruminant nutrition at the ARC: Irene. He left the ARC in 1996 for the Kwasizabantu Mission in KZN. He passed away on the 10th of April 2023.

Professor Frans van der Merwe passed away in Stellenbosch at the 3 March 2023, aged 91. He was appointed Professor at the University of Stellenbosch in 1965. He published the well-known textbook “Dierevoeding” (Animal Nutrition) in 1970. He was appointed Chief Director: Animal Production in Pretoria in 1982 and promoted to Director General: Department of Agriculture in 1992, retiring in 1997.

Dr. Danie Bosman: a respected animal scientist, well-known locally and internationally, passed away on the 15th of January 2023 after a short illness.

Our condolences go to Prof Hettie Schönfeldt, our society secretary, on the recent loss of her mother.

Well done to the following SASAS members who are listed in the top 50 “Best Animal Science and Veterinary Scientists in South Africa” (with animal including zoology) by Research.com as of 21/12/2022.

  • Voster Muchenje – University of Fort Hare.
  • Michael Chimonyo – University of KwaZulu-Natal.
  • Kennedy Dzama – Stellenbosch University.
  • R. M. Gous – University of KwaZulu-Natal.
  • Cletos Mapiye – Stellenbosch University.
  • Ignatius Nsahlai – University of KwaZulu-Natal.
  • E.C. Webb – University of Pretoria.

SASAS bursary

This bursary is awarded, on academic merit, to a post-grad student studying Animal Science.

The bursary for 2023 has been awarded to Annalize-Mari Alberts from the University of Pretoria.

To end with some good news, a study of Diet, cardiovascular disease, and mortality in 80 countries has shown something we as animal scientists have always believed, that whole fat dairy is good for your heart and unprocessed meats are not bad for you (https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehad269).

Trevor Dugmore
President: SASAS
SASAS Congress

SASAS Congress 2022
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