The Arbor Acres® Middle East and Africa (MEA) team welcomed distributors to Dubai for its Arbor Acres Middle East and Africa Association (AAMEA) meeting from 20-24 November. This was the first face-to-face meeting this group had since 2018, when they last met in Dubai for the Arbor Acres 85th celebration.

Joining the group were Aviagen executives including Jan Henriksen, CEO, Tom Exley, President of TMEA, Michael Garden, Business Manager, MENA, Robert Roszkopf, Business Manager, SSA, alongside the Arbor Acres MEA team, Aviagen genetics and veterinary experts and specialists.

Discussions critical to the region focused on essential commercial and flock management topics for the poultry industry such as security of supply, food security, and strengthening local production through investments within the MEA region.

A number of key presentations were given including:

• Aviagen Veterinary Health Director, Colin Adams presented on the Great Britain (GB Enhanced Standard) compartmentalization program as an effective strategy to safeguard poultry trade to the region during a notifiable avian disease outbreak in the supplying country.
• Guest speaker, Kate Hartley, co-owner of Polpeo presented on how to handle a crisis with a correct communication plan in place. This presentation also had a key focus on security of supply, related to Avian Influenza in particular.
• Rupert Claxton, Senior Strategy Consultant for GIRA, gave attendees an update on the global and local poultry market trends post COVID-19.
• Bill Levell, owner of WLM Marketing Management and Training, ran a compartmentalization and regionalization workshop that outlined how to prepare a document with the local Ministry showcasing the key selling messages of compartmentalization in order to assist the importing country on how to amend its local import certificate with the appropriate wording. This will assist the local Ministry in working together with DEFRA and the USDA in order to accept the Aviagen Compartment Scheme to ensure security of supply into the TMEA region.

Compartmentalization and regionalization require major focus from our Arbor Acres distributors as they play a crucial role in lobbying with their local governments, to accept and implement compartmentalization from approved compartments in the UK and the USA, in order to ensure security of supply to the region in the event of a notifiable disease outbreak in the exporting country.

Martin Middernacht, Managing Director, CHI Farms Ltd, expressed his thanks to the team, “On behalf of CHI Farms I would like to thank Aviagen and Arbor Acres for the fantastic conference, which reconfirms our strong relationship with Arbor Acres. Thank you to the different guest speakers for their respective presentations which were very informative, encouraging and highlight the strength of the Arbor Acres brand, which supports the theme of the meeting, exceeding the vision. The Arbor Acres breed is performing extremely well in the Nigerian market, at both Parent Stock and broiler level, and I look forward to seeing the developments in the genetic potential of the breed in the future.”

“Dubai is a splendid city and Arbor Acres is a great breed. Al Maktoum in Dubai and Arbor Acres have many common visions. A vision of having a leading role in providing a sustainable and healthy life, steadily developing and improving, meeting the current and future needs, firmly focused on quality, and providing an added value. Throughout the last 90 years, Arbor Acres has been implementing this vision and has even exceeded this vision throughout the years. The results we have been experiencing in the field have given us the confidence to highlight the theme of ‘Exceeding the Vision’ to describe the continuous genetic improvement of the Arbor Acres breed. For that, I would like to express a huge thank you to our distributors for their efforts in showcasing the best of the Arbor Acres genetics,” added Khalil Nassar, International Commercial Manager, MEA, Arbor Acres.