The meeting, which is set for 10 to 12 March at the Intercontinental hotel, will commence just prior to the opening of the VIV Asia 2013 show, to be held on 13 to 15 March at the Bangkok Trade and Exhibition Centre.

Adriaan Weststrate, managing director of Rabobank International, and Gordon Butland, director of G&S Agriconsulting Co. Ltd., will be among the speakers for meeting. Weststrate and Butland will give presentations on the global economic outlook for poultry trade and will discuss the volatility of the world market for feed grains and oilseeds.

Also, Dr Hiroshi Kida, head of the OIE Reference Laboratory for Avian Influenza at Hokkaido University in Japan, will lead a panel discussion on avian influenza during the meeting. Invited to join Kida on the panel is Dr Miguel Angel Marquez, a veterinarian at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, who is also a consultant on AI for the Food and Agriculture of the UN, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the World Bank. Both men were key players in their governments' eradication efforts during recent outbreaks of highly pathogenic AI in Japan and Mexico.

Other speakers on the programme include Waewkanee Assoratgoon, chief marketing officer for YUM! Restaurants International in Thailand, who will discuss the companies marketing and expansion efforts in the region; Dr Shiro Yoshimura, former director general of the International Animal Health Affairs Office of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, who will give a presentation on Japan's quarantine procedures on imported poultry; and Craig Morris, deputy administrator of the Agricultural Marketing Service of the US Department of Agriculture, who will present a report on the ISO initiative to develop technical specifications on animal welfare.

Members of the IPC will provide regulatory updates on issues pending before OIE, FAO and the Codex Alimentarius Commission, and presentations on the status of the poultry industries in their individual countries.

The IPC will award its prestigious annual International Award of Excellence for generic poultry marketing during the meeting. The organisation presents a generic marketing award and a branded marketing award each year to a country or company with the best marketing programme for increasing sales or consumption of poultry.

Past winners of the generic award are FENAVI, the Colombian Poultry Association, and Productschap Pluimvee & Eieren, the Poultry Association of the Netherlands. Previous winners of the branded award are Rainbow Chicken of South Africa and Baiada Poultry Pty. Ltd. of Australia.

Online registration for the meeting is available at www.internationalpoultrycouncil.org. Registration is US$570 per person, and the Intercontinental has granted a special IPC meeting rate for attendees.

For additional information, contact IPC Secretary General, George Watts.