During the first week of April, a team of poultry nutrition and disease control consultants, consisting of Dr. Richard Miles, professor emeritus of poultry nutrition at the University of Florida, and Dr. Gary Butcher, professor of poultry diseases at the University of Florida, visited Romania to provide technical assistance to U.S. soybean meal customers from Romania and Bulgaria. USSEC Animal Utilization Consultant – Romania Dr. Iani Chihaia escorted the visitors.

For three full days, the team of consultants met with key broiler integrations from southern Romania and northern Bulgaria to learn about the current status of poultry diseases in the region and offer recommendations in preventing the most critical threat to the worldwide poultry industry, avian influenza. Dr. Miles emphasized the importance of soybean meal quality for modern broilers and how U.S. Soy creates advantages for the broiler farming industry.

Broiler house management, poultry necropsy techniques, and the reasons for vaccination failure were discussed during onsite sessions organized at the farms for the customers’ technical teams. Young professionals both enjoyed and benefited from the meetings with the U.S. experts and asked for future trainings conducted by Drs. Miles and Butcher.

Although their industries are still considered small, Romania and Bulgaria’s poultry farming sectors have made significant progress during the past decade in both volume and technical performances, enabling them to compete with important European players, making the two countries’ industries valued and reliable customers for U.S. Soy. Offering technical support in the field of nutrition and disease control is creating a win-win relationship between exporters and the growing southeast European poultry industry.