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Feed Microscopy Newsletter November 2006

FM Division Plans for the Upcoming 98th AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo
Neil Vary

Some of you may think it's too early to start thinking about the 98th AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo that will be held May 13-17, 2007 in beautiful Quebec City, Canada. I think it's a perfect time to mark your calendar to ensure that you do miss out on this great event.

Planning for this upcoming event already started during the 97th AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo that was held in St. Louis, MO this spring. The FM Division Officers hit the ground running. Although potential speakers have yet to be selected, the topics of the technical sessions have been decided upon, and preparations are well underway. Our Division is working together with other AOCS Divisions to bring in a number of speakers with various backgrounds. This collaboration will not only expose our Division's members to areas of interest that we might not normally have an opportunity to explore, but will also expose and educate other Division's members about microscopy. We have already teamed up with the Protein and Co-Products Division (PCP) for the Tuesday afternoon technical session.

Monday will consist of two Agricultural Microscopy sessions that will cover a broad range of agricultural microscopy topics. Tuesday afternoon's joint session with the PCP Division will focus on aquaculture, which is a sometimes overlooked, yet ever expanding area where feed plays an important role. Wednesday morning's technical session will cover Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs).

Do you or someone you know have a topic of interest to present during any of the planned technical sessions? If so, feel free to submit their names to any FM Division Officer. The more speakers we have, the greater this forum for educating and information sharing will be.

Speaking of educating, the Wednesday morning TSE technical session will be a great precursor for a two and a half day intermediate/advanced feed microscopy short course tentatively scheduled to commence that afternoon. This short course will focus on the Canada/US feed bans and detection of animal products in feeds. Topics of this course will include: sample preparation; identification of animal tissues; detection of minute amounts of animal products in feeds; differentiation of mammalian, avian, and marine derived products; identification of species through hair fragments; potential misidentification traps; limitations of microscopy; etc. Participants will gain valuable experience through hands-on laboratory exercises throughout the course. They will also increase their knowledge base while acquiring useful skills for examination of feeds to determine if animal products are present. Instructors will be present to share information in a relaxed classroom/laboratory setting and available to help individuals in a one-on-one basis.

I look forward reuniting with long-distance colleagues and hope to see some new faces. I personally invite you to my home country and look forward to you being able to experience the rich culture Quebec has to offer. Au plaisir de vous voir à Québec! (See you in Quebec City, eh!).

AOCS, 2710 S. Boulder, Urbana, IL 61802-6996 USA

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