FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The Center for Food Animal Wellbeing, a unit of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture and the University of Arkansas, hosted its fifth annual symposium Aug. 6 on advances and current issues in food animal wellbeing. Featured speakers included Paul McKellips, a former vice president at the Foundation for Biomedical Research, television and movie producer and public affairs specialist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who addressed biomedical research and its similarities with animal agriculture in providing food and medicine while protecting the world's population from bioterrorism and biowarfare.

The one-day symposium addressed issues being faced today by the cattle and poultry industries as well as topics important to all of animal production agriculture including welfare, public perception and technology.

Other speakers included Ruth Woiwode, a student of animal science professor Temple Grandin at Colorado State University; Carla Wardin, a blogger and one of the "Faces of Farming" selected by the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance; Paul Siegel, Virginia Tech University distinguished professor emeritus of animal and poultry science; Lucy Anthernill, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service humane handling enforcement coordinator; Colin Scanes, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, professor of animal physiology and nutrition; Kate Barger, Cobb-Vantress, Inc., director of animal welfare; Karen Christensen, Division of Agriculture associate professor and extension specialist, and Rusty Rumley, senior staff attorney at the Division of Agriculture's National Agricultural Law Center.

Yvonne Vizzier Thaxton, director for the Center for Food Animal Wellbeing, said, "I am thrilled that this year we had an extraordinary roster of speakers with international reputations speaking on animal welfare and related issues of current interest to those of us in animal agriculture."

Thaxton said the goal for the Center for Food Animal Wellbeing is to improve animal health, animal handling, food safety and productivity by developing and defining objective measurements of wellbeing including measures of behavior, stress physiology, neurophysiology, immunology, microbiology and production efficiency.