USAgNet reports that it will also provide a number of additional important benefits not typically found in poultry companies' in-house programmes, according to PSA.

Scheduled to launch in late spring, the Poultry Handling and Transportation Quality Assurance Programme will offer multiple one-day training sessions to transportation and catch crews on biosecurity, disease recognition, emergency planning and the safe and humane handling of birds. With the exception of ducks, PHTQA will cover every segment of the poultry industry, including day-old poultry, pullets, spent fowl, broilers, leghorn and broiler breeders and turkeys.

Programme materials, including a detailed training manual, will be made available in both English and Spanish. Each training session will last approximately four hours, after which participants will be tested on the day's materials. Participants who successfully complete the training programme and tests will be certified by PHTQA.

The Poultry Handling and Transportation Quality Assurance Programme is similar to the Pork Transportation and Quality Assurance Programme developed by the National Pork Check-off Programme. PHTQA training will initially focus on companies in the Northeast, though depending on interest, it may eventually serve as the foundation for a national programme, according to Dr Eva Wallner-Pendleton, PHTQA's senior editor and project coordinator, and an avian pathologist and field investigator at Penn State's Animal Diagnostic Laboratory.