By NAGA Vice President Brian Beavers
Eleven North American Gamebird Association members attended the 44th National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP) Biennial Conference June 26-28 at Franklin, Tennessee, June 26-28.
NPIP is a voluntary, national collaboration with state and federal departments of agriculture and industry representatives. The program’s goal is to use the latest diagnostic technology to effectively improve poultry and poultry products throughout the United States.
NPIP provides certification that poultry and poultry products destined for domestic and international shipments are free of certain diseases. As a result, NPIP-certified farms can in most cases ship birds across state lines, and customers can buy gamebirds and other poultry that has tested clean of certain diseases, and has been produced under disease-prevention conditions.
NAGA representatives attended to the conference to champion the separation of the gamebird industry from NPIP Program Subparts 145-E and 146-E into a new subpart, 145-J.
What does this mean to our industry? Prior to separation, the gamebird industry was grouped with backyard flocks and ducks.
NAGA Sponsor Member Troy Laudenslager of Mahantongo Game Farms in Dalmatia, Pennsylvania, spearheaded drafting a proposal for this separation. Upon presenting the information to the NAGA Board of Directors, he received the support needed at the meeting to ensure the proposal for separation was not dead in the water.
NAGA members attending the meeting funded their own travel expenses to help further our industry. Now that the gamebird industry is on the path to subpart 145-J, we are better positioned to have direct input on the USDA NPIP Program’s regulation/guidelines for the gamebird industry. Full details will be published in the September-October edition of the NAGA News.
There also plans to extensively review and begin working on changes to further refine Subpart 145-J at the 2019 NAGA Education Conference and Convention in Savanah, Georgia, to present at the 2020 NPIP conference.
