1. The President and Chairman Prof. Hafez welcomed the participants

2. Secretary/Treasurer's report

Dr Ursula Heffels-Redman reported that two new branches (Jordan, 24 members, Corresponding Secretary: Dr. Mohammad Al-Natour and Thailand, 20 members, Corresponding secretary: Dr. Sumeth Sapchukun) had been created. The formation of these branches has been approved by the Bureau and the new members were welcomed in the Association. Figures were given for membership (2199 in 56 countries), with Europe still having the greatest representation (1084). Membership numbers in Africa have reduced due to the political changes and the resulting unclear situation in the North- African member states, while the membership numbers in America and Australia increased.

Concerning the WVPA finances, in 2009 the Association's assets increased to 36,833.56 EURO with a surplus of expenditure over income of 3,775.03 EURO. The relatively high amount of expenses (13,000 EURO) were caused by costs for the Congress in Beijing, China (support of young scientists, travel expenses of Officers). In 2010, the income was nearly half of that of 2009, as many of the branches pay their fees in two years interval. Due to low expenses in that year without a congress the surplus of income over expenditure of 5,180.81 EURO led to a further increase of the assets to 42,014.37 EURO at December 31, 2010.

For the attendance of the XVIIth Congress and presentation of a paper, WVPA supports again 11 young scientists with an amount of 750 Euro. These 11 colleagues come from Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Jordan, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa and Venezuela.

The advantages of WVPA membership were outlined and instructions were given for taking out membership. At the end of her term in office the Secretary/Treasurer thanked the Corresponding Secretaries and members for their cooperation over the last ten years.

3. Newsletter 'Aerosols'/Editor's Report

Nigel Horrox stated that the WVPA newsletter is no longer a loss-making venture for the WVPA but is turning in a slight profit. It is produced by Positive Action Publications in the UK. About half the WVPA branches contributed articles last year but others are strongly urged to contribute. This can be done electronically via the National Secretary of the relevant Branch.

4. Avian Pathology/Editor-in-Chief's report

Professor Janet Bradbury reminded members that they can subscribe to the journal at a very favourable rate (access via the WVPA website). Royalties earned by the journal are distributed through its owners (the Houghton Trust) to support young avian scientists to attend courses or meetings such as the WVPA Congress and to support the Houghton Lecture. The journal continues to maintain its high ranking amongst veterinary science journals according to Impact Factor and Article Influence Score. It will be celebrating its 40th Anniversary year with a new cover and special feature articles.

5. Report on the XVIIth WVPA Congress in Cancun, Mexico by a member of the Organizing Committee

Dr Marco Rebollo reported that the Congress included 285 papers consisting of 126 posters, 116 oral presentations, 15 keynote lectures and 4 symposia. At the commercial exhibition there were 45 booths. Total attendance was 893 people from 61 countries. Of these 259 were from Mexico, 91 from the USA and Canada, 12 from Central America, 56 from South America (totalling 418 from the Americas), 238 from Europe, 90 from Asia, 7 from Australasia and 63 from Africa. 77 attendants did not specify their country of origin.

6. Election of officers

The posts are for the next four years. There was one nomination, Dr Trevor Bagust, for President and he was unanimously elected; there were two nominations for Vice-President but one candidate subsequently withdrew, leaving Nigel Horrox unanimously elected; Professor Hafez, as the retiring President, becomes a Vice-President and Dr Francois- Xavier Le Gros is elected as the new Secretary/Treasurer. Editors are not elected. Professor Erhard Kaleta and Dr Ursula Heffels-Redmann leave their respective offices as Vice-President and Secretary/Treasurer with grateful thanks for all their hard work over many years.

7. Nominations of Honorary Life Members

Professors Bruce Calnek and László Stipkovits were elected as Honorary Life Members and Professor Erhard F. Kaleta and Dr Ursula Heffels-Redmann were elected as Honorary Life Presidents in recognition of their long and valuable service to the WVPA.

8. Houghton Trust Lecturer

Dr. Erica Spackman, USA was chosen by the Grants Subcommittee of the Houghton Trust as the 2011 Lecturer. She gave her lecture entitled 'Viral Diagnostics: Will new Technology save the day?' at the beginning of the morning session on Tuesday, 16 August 2011.

There are six nominations for the next lecturer, who will make the presentation at the XVlllth Congress in 2013.

9. Bart Rispens Research Award

Prof. Hafez informed the attendees that the 2011 Bart Rispens Award for the best paper published in 'Avian Pathology' in the years 2009 and 2010 will be presented to the winner by the President (certificate) and a representative of Intervet (symbolic cheque) at this Congress during the Gala Dinner.

The committee for deciding the next two awards is composed of the WVPA President, the Secretary (the retiring President), the Editor-in-Chief of Avian Pathology, a representative of the sponsor and Dr Elena Catelli, Italy, Dr Amir Noormohammadi, Australia, Professor Richard Ducatelle, Belgium and one other (to be selected).

10. WVPA Congresses

Guidelines/protocols for future hosts of World Congresses of WVPA have been drafted and will be sent to all Branch secretaries for comment. Congress intervals are under further discussion. Industry would like to see a congress hosted every two years and branch secretaries recently voted for this, hence the next two congresses are fixed as the XVlllth Congress from Monday August 19 to Friday August 23 2013 in Nantes, France and the XIXth Congress in September 6-10, 2015 in Cape Town, South Africa. Promotional video films were shown of both congress venues. The frequency of future congresses will be addressed again at the 2013 meeting.

11 Any other business

There being no other business, the President congratulated the new members of the Executive and France and S. Africa for succeeding with their bids to host the next two congresses.

Finally, Prof. Hafez thanked all members for their attendance and closed the Meeting at 17:45.

Giessen, Germany, 17 October 2011

1. The President and Chairman Prof. Hafez welcomed the participants.

2. Secretary/Treasurer’s report

Dr. Heffels-Redmann presented her report dealing with the development of the membership, and the finances of the WVPA for the year 2007 and 2008. The association currently has 2198 members in 59 countries. National Branches exist in 37 countries, of which 32 have 20 or more members e.g. that they are Bureau Members.

Distribution of members on continents:

A new branch has been formed within the last two years in

	2007	2008	2009
Manuscript received	185	191
Manuscripts accepted	49 %	31 %
Original papers published	64	81
Review articles published	5	4
Main topic: Virus infections	61 %	49 %
Impact factor	1.809	1.257	1.700
Ranking in Vet. Sci. Journals	12/128	32/133	18/134

1. The President and Chairman Prof. Hafez welcomed the participants.

2. Secretary/Treasurer’s report

Dr. Heffels-Redmann presented her report dealing with the development of the membership, and the finances of the WVPA for the year 2005 and 2006. The association currently has 1889 in 50 countries. National Branches exist in 39 countries, of which 33 have 20 or more members e.g. that they are Bureau Members.

Distribution of members on continents:

New branches had been formed within the last two years in

The formation of these branches has been approved by the Bureau and the new members were welcomed in the Association.

Copies of the Account and Balance Sheet for the years 2005 and 2006 have been sent to all branches and individual members. In 2005 the Association’s assets decreased from EURO 36,266.69 to EURO 28,019.56 which was mainly due to the financial support (750 EURO each) of young scientists from developping countries for the attendance of the WVPA Congress in Istanbul. In 2006 the surplus of income over expenditure of Euro 1150.36 again led to a slight increase of the assets to EURO 29,169.92 at December 31, 2006. For the participation at this Congress again 10 scientists have been financially supported.

The in-time payment of the membership fees (deadline 1^st of June) and the updating of the membership addresses are important for the personal subscription to ‘Avian Pathology’ which will also enable the access to the full paper online version. This will only be possible, if a proof of actual WVPA membership (membership certificate/receipt of payment for the year from the Coreesponding Secretary or the Secretary/Treasurer of WVPA or copy of the bank transfer voucher of the membership fees) has to be given to the publisher of Avian Pathology.

3. WVPA homepage

Dr. Heffels-Redmann reported that the WVPA home page was visited about 1900 times per month in the last 12 months. The mostly visited pages were the pages ‘WVPA Congress’, ‘International Conferences’, ‘Avian Pathology’, ‘National Branches’ and ‘How to join WVPA’, ‘Houghton Trust Travel Grants and Lecturer’ as well as ‘Minutes of General Business Meeting’. Visitors of the homepage came mainly from the USA (17%), while visitors from other countries worldwide were represented with 1-5% each. The country of origin of a great number of visitors, however, could not be followed up, as they used worldwide operating servers.

4. WVPA Newsletter

Dr. Carol Cardona reported that the issue No. 17 was mailed to 1600 members in the beginning of this year, whereas about 200 were returned to her due to incorrect addresses. As the costs for mailing are very high, it was discussed how to improve the mailing to each individual member. It was decided to test

- the delivery by email (in the US Branch) and

- the control of the list with incorrect addresses by the respective Corresponding Secretary

(in the Egyptian Branch).

For the next issue which will be prepared in November of this year, all participants were asked to send reports on meetings, disease outbreaks and other important events in their countries to Dr. Cardona (address on the wvpa website).

5. Avian Pathology/Editor-in-Chief’s report

Dr. Cavanagh presented his report for the year 2006 (Volume 35). The main points were:

• The Impact Factor for ‚Avian Pathology (AVP)’ increased to 1.809
• AVP is ranked 12^th out of 128 veterinary science journals
• Highest Impact Factor amongst avian journals
• Increase of Editors to 10
• Accentuation of the scope of AVP
• 164 papers received
• 72 original articles and 2 review articles published

6. Bart Rispens research Award

At the Bureau Meeting in 2005, Dr. Ton Schat, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Award, proposed to fully transfer the Award to the WVPA. This means that the WVPA shall be responsible for the secretarial work of the Research Award Committee and for the funding of future awards. The Bureau supported the idea of Dr. Schat, but asked for detailed information on the finances, possible sponsors and work of the Research Award Committee. In the meantime, Intervet International BV agreed to become the exclusive financial sponsor of the Award for ten years or five Awards, respectively, beginning with the 2007 Award. After pre-circulation and agreement of all Bureau members a contract including the selection procedure for the winner had been signed by representatives of Intervet and the WVPA President and Secretary/Treasurer.

Prof. Hafez informed the attendees that the 2007 Winner of the Bart Rispens Award for the best paper published in ‘Avian Pathology’ in the years 2005 and 2006 will be announced at the Congress during the Gala Dinner. The Award will be presented by the President (certificate) and a representative of Intervet (symbolic cheque).

Present:
President and Chairman Prof. E.F. Kaleta
Secretary/Treasurer Dr. U. Heffels-Redmann
and approximately 100 members

1. The President and Chairman Prof. Kaleta welcomed the participants.

2. Secretary/Treasurer's report

Dr. Heffels-Redmann presented her report dealing with the development of the membership, the homepage, and the finances of the WVPA for the year 2004. There are currently 1956 members in 53 countries. National branches exist in 37 countries. 28 of these have 20 or more members e.g. that their Corresponding Secretaries are Bureau members. New branches had been formed within the last two years in

Country	Number of members	Corresponding Secretary
Mexico	200	Dr. Edgardo Soriano Vargas
Poland	22	Dr. Zenon Minta
Tunisia	26	Dr. Abdeljelil Ghram
Ukraine	17	Dr. Viatcheslav German

The formation of these branches has been approved by the Bureau and the new members were welcomed in the Association.

Copies of the Account and Balance Sheet for the year 2004 have been sent to all branches and individual members. In the last year the Association's assets increased from EURO 33,316.81 to EURO 36,266.69 due to an surplus of income over expenditure of EURO 2,949.88. At the last Bureau Meeting it was decided to support the WVPA Congress attendance in Istanbul of ten young scientists from developping countries with an amount of totally EURO 7500. According to the experience of the Congress Organization with this financial support the Bureau has to decide how to proceed at the next Congress.

The in-time payment of the membership fees and the updating of the membership addresses are important for the personal subscription to 'Avian Pathology' which will also enable the access to the full paper online version from 2006 on. This will only be possible, if a proof of actual WVPA membership (membership certificate/receipt of payment for the year from the Coreesponding Secretary or the Secretary/Treasurer of WVPA or copy of the bank transfer voucher of the membership fees has to be given to the publisher of Avian Pathology.

3. WVPA homepage

Dr. Heffels-Redmann reported that the WVPA home page was visited about 1200 times per month. The mostly visited pages were the pages 'WVPA Congress', 'International Conferences', 'Avian Pathology', 'Houghton Trust Travel Grants and Lecturer', 'National Branches' and 'How to join WVPA' as well as 'Education'. Visitors of the homepage came mainly from the USA, Germany and Australia.

The Bureau agreed to omit the link to the poultry related industry to avoid a commercialisation of the website, and to install links to websites of other organizations like the WPSA and national poultry veterinarians associations. Additionally a page with job offers in the WVPA branch countries shall be opened.

4. WVPA Newsletter

As the Editor of the newsletter 'Aerosols' Dr. Carol Cardona was not able to attend the Meeting, Dr. Heffels-Redmann presented her report for the Aerosols issues No. 15 and 16:

	Issue No. 15	Issue No. 16
Publication Date :	12/2003	11/2004
No of pages:	10	8
Country reports	6	8
Advertisements:	4	4
Copies mailed:	1566	1600
Return rate:	3 %	2.2 %
Costs (US$):	6,150.29	4,193.85

In 2004 Dr. Cardona asked a graphic designer to make a new layout for the newsletter. With a more efficient page layout the number of pages of the newsletter could be reduced. Additionally a paper quality of lighter weight was used. Overall, these changes cut the expenses by approximately US$ 1800.

For the next issue, all participants were asked to send reports on meetings, disease outbreaks and other important events in their countries to Dr. Cardona (address on the wvpa website).

5. Avian Pathology/Editor-in-Chief's report

Dr. Cavanagh presented the main points of his report for the year 2004 (Volume 33):

• 143 papers received in 2004 (155 & 151 in previous two years).
• Acceptance rate was 48% (53% & 43% in previous two years).
• 78 primary papers and 5 reviews published in volume 34 (2004).
• Latest Impact Factor 1.371 (published in 2005 for 2004)
• AVP has the highest Impact Factor of journals devoted to avian species.
• Median publication time of 6.5 months following receipt of initial manuscript (June 2005 issue).

Additionally he pointed to

• the new web address: www.avianpathology.com,
• SARA, a free email contents alerting service designed to deliver tables of contents for all Taylor&Francis journals including Avian Pathology in advance of the printed edition,
• free online access to full papers of the actual issue from 2006 on for individual subscribers, who are WVPA members,
• free online access to back issues (Volume 33 (2004) for all from 2006 on, the access to issues from 1998-2003 will follow soon
• free access to older back issues via intersession by Dr. Cavanagh to respective libraries.

6. Report on the XIVth WVPA Congress by a member of the Organizing Committee

Dr. Gürer gave a preliminary report on the ongoing Congress. 730 persons registered for the Congress, but about 200 cancelled their registration before the Congress. Due to the offer of simultan translation of the English presentations into Turkish, the attendance of Turkish colleagues could be increased significantly (206 plus about 200 participants for one day). The scientific programme comprises 15 keynote lectures, the Houghton Lecture, 174 oral and 199 poster presentations. Along with the Congress, the VIV 2005 Istanbul Exhibition took place with free entrance for all Congress participants.

7. Report on the XVth WVPA Congress by a member of the Organizing Committee

Prof. Hanchun Yang announced that the XVth WVPA Congress will be held in Beijing, China on 12-16 September 2007. The local sientific Committee will consist out of ten well-known chinese scientists. The Scientific Chairman for the Congress is Prof. Jiao Zhou, the President of the Poultry Health Branch of the Chinese Association of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine. The Congress will take place in the Beijing International Convention Center. The registration fees will be US$ 350 for early and US$ 400 for late registrations. A flyer with the first announcement was presented at a stand. The scientific programme comprises keynote lectures to selected topics, oral presentations and poster presentations. Additionally there will be an exhibition. Detailed information on the congress can be obtained from the website of the WVPC 2007 www.wvpc2007.org. A film on Beijing and the Convention Center was presented, and on behalf of the Congress Organizing Committee, Prof. Yang invited all participants to attend the 15th WVPA Congress in his country in 2007.

8. Election of Officers

The participants of the Meeting approved the recommendations of the Bureau by electing with no dissenting votes

Prof. Dr. M. Hafez	President
Dr. Trevor Bagust	Vice-President
(2nd Vice-President is automatically the former President Prof. Erhard F. Kaleta)
Dr. Ursula Heffels-Redmann	Secretary/Treasurer (re-elected)
Dr. Lloyd Spencer	Honorary Life President
Prof. Dr. A.A. Sami Ahmed	Honorary Life President

9. Election of Honorary Life Members

The Meeting elected Prof. Dr. Josef Kösters, Germany and Dr. Eugen Vielitz, Germany as Honorary Life Members whose nominations have been approved by the Bureau because of their distinguished contributions to avian science.

10. Houghton Trust Lecturer 2005

Dr. Ilaria Capua, Italy has been choosen by the Grants Subcommitte of the Houghton Trust as the 2005 Lecturer. She gave her lecture entitled 'Avian Influenza - Past present and future challenges' on 23 August 2005 at the end of the morning session.

11. Bart Rispens Research Award

The winner of the 2003 Award is Dr. Andre Steentjes, The Netherlands, of the 2005 Award is Dr. Rüdiger Raue, Germany.The Awards were presented to Dr. Wil Landman, a co-author of Dr. Steentjes, and Dr. Raue by the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Dr. Ton Schat, during the Gala Dinner.

Future of the Bart Rispens Research Award

After a short overview on the history of the Award (The ward has been established in 1973 after the sudden death of Dr. Bart Rispens by Dr. Henk Mass 1. to honour Dr. Rispens by the Research Award and 2. to secure the education of his two young childeren by a Trust fund. Gifts from industry sources, other organizations and friends of Dr. Rispens provided the funding. During the 1990's the Trust fund for the two children has officially been terminated. Since then the Board of Trustees raised additional funds from several vaccine industries to support the research award) Dr. Ton Schat, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, proposed to fully integrate the Award into the WVPA. This means that the WVPA shall be responsible for the secretarial work of the Research Award Committee and for the funding of future awards. Up to now the part of WVPA was that the President became at the same time Chairman. of the Research Award Committee and that WVPA gave a support of 500 Euro to the travel expenses of the Award winner. The Bureau supported the idea of Dr. Schat, but ask for detailed information on the finances, possible sponsors and work of the Research Award Committee. Before the final decision, this information shall be given to all Bureau members in a circular letter.

12. XVIth WVPA Congress in 2009

Prof. Kaleta announced that the Bureau decided by majority voting for Marrakesh, Morocco as venue for the XIth WVPA Congress. The Representative of the Morrocan Branch Prof.Bouzoubaa thanked the Bureau members for their vote, and invited the participants to attend the Congress on 8-12 June in 2009. He gave the audience an impression of Marrakesh as a congress venue by a Power point presentation.

13. Any other Business: none

Prof Kaleta thanked all participants for their attendance, and closed the Meeting at 18:10 hours.

Giessen, Germany, 17/10/05

Dr. U. Heffels-Redmann
Secretary/Treasurer of WVPA
 

Present: 

President and Chairman Prof. E.F. Kaleta 
Secretary/Treasurer Dr. U. Heffels-Redmann 
and approximately 50 members 
 
 

1. The President and Chairman Prof. Kaleta welcomed the participants.  

2. Secretary/Treasurer’s report  

Dr. Heffels-Redmann presented her report dealing with the development of the membership, the homepage, and the finances of the WVPA for the year 2002. There are currently 1709 members in 53 countries. National branches exist in 33 countries. 28 of these have 20 or more members e.g. that theie Corresponding Secretaries are Bureau members. New branches had been formed in Lithuania, Morocco, and Russia in the year 2002. Dr. Heffels-Redmann announced that a further new branch has just been formed in Mexico. The Corresponding Secretary of this branch Dr. Edgardo Soriano Vargas introduced himself to the participants of the General Business Meeting 

To make the WVPA web site more attractive the Bureau approved to include the following information: 
- Constitution & Rules 
- Avian Pathology/ Editor-in-Chief’s report 
- Secretary/Treasurer’s report 
- Extraordinary disease reports 
- New books 
- Announcements of congresses and meetings 
- Education and training programmes 
- Links to related journals and organizations. 

The Association‘s assets stood at EURO 29,826.94 at the end of 2001. This amount is a result out of 40 years. The average surplus in the last years were about Euro 3,000 yearly. This may be lower in the next years due to increasing expenses for the maintenance of the homepage and travel expenses for officers to the WVPA Congresses which now take place every two years. 

At the last Bureau Meeting in Cairo, Egypt in January 2002 the majority of Bureau members agreed to the proposal to give financial support to young scientists for the attendance of WVPA Congresses. After discussion at the Meeting in Denver the Bureau approved the following preliminary procedure: 
The Organizing Committee of the XIV. Congress will receive an amount of Euro 7,500 for supporting  10 scientists (payment of Euro 750 by cheque at arrival at the Congress venue) from developing countries. The candidates have to fulfill the following criteria: 
- Presenter of a paper (oral or poster) of good quality, 
- Need of support, 
- No inhabitant of the Congress organizing country, 
- No support from the Houghton Trust at the same time. 

At the next Bureau Meeting the experiences with this procedure shall be reported and altered, if required. 

Additionally the Bureau agreed to support the travel expenses of Bureau Members from developing countries (once) to enable them to attend the Congress and the Bureau Meeting. 
 

3. Alterations to the Constitution and Rules  

At the Bureau Meeting in Cairo in Jaunary 2002 a committee consisting of Dr. Payne, Dr. Spencer, Prof. Kaleta, Dr. Cavanagh and Prof. Hafez was formed to revise the Constitution & Rules. Their draft was circulated to all Officers and Corresponding Secretaries and was placed on the WVPA web site to ask for comments and amendments. Prof. Kaleta summarized the main points altered in the revised version, which was approved at the Bureau Meeting for voting at the General Business Meeting: 

- No longer affiliation to the WVA 
- Scientific congresses every two years, venue chosen by the Bureau four years in advance from competitive bids presented by national branches that have a representative on the Bureau 
- Formation of national branches from an existing national body or a group of individual poultry veterinarians (10 members) 
- Officers: Honorary Life Presidents, President (four years), Vice-Presidents (four years), Secretary/Treasurer (four years, re-election for further four years possible), Editor of the newsletter Aerosols (election period determined by the Bureau, re-election possible), Editor-in-Chief of the journal Avian Pathology (appointed by the Houghton Trust) 
- Bidding procedure for hosting a congress as apppendix to the Constitution & Rules. 

The revised version of the Constitution & Rules was approved by all those present at the Meeting without any vote against. 
 

4. Avian Pathology/Editor-in-Chief’s report (attached)  

Dr. Cavanagh presented the main points of his report for the years 2001 and 2002 (Volumes 30 and 31): 

- Editorial team increased to eight in February 2001. 
- Jim Payne retired as an editor in 2002. 
- Four new Advisory Board members in February 2002. 
- AVP accepted for indexation in PubMed. 
- Impact factor rose to 1.428 (2001) and 1.655 (2002). 
- AVP ranked 6/128 in the Veterinary Sciences category. 
- Manuscripts received: 122 (2001), 151 (2002). 
- Acceptance rate: 51% (2001), 43% (2002). 
- Papers published: 70 (2002), 64 (2002) 
- Reviews published: 5 in each year. 
- Median Publication time of 7.2 months following receipt of initial manuscript. 
- The ‘Short communication’ format will no longer be used; all original articles will have the same format. 
- ‘Case reports’ will continue to be published, but without the heading ‘Case Report’. 
 

5. Report on the XIIIth WVPA Congress by the Chair of the Organizing Committee  

Dr. Witter gave a preliminary report on the ongoing Congress. 726 persons registered for the Congress.The scientific programme comprises 12 keynote lectures, the Houghton Lecture, the Lasher History Lecture, 146 oral and 250 poster presentations from 44 countries, 50 % from the USA and 50 % from the other countries. 50 presenters from these countries could be supported financially to attend the congress. 
 

6. Report on the XIVth WVPA Congress by the Chair of the Organizing Committee  

Dr. Gürer informed the Bureau members on the progress in the organization of the WVPA Congress in Istanbul, Turkey, which will take on 22-26 August 2005. Congress secretariates have been established in Istanbul (info@wvpc2005.org) and Ankara (akan@veterinary.ankara.edu.tr) . A flyer with the first announcement was presented. This will also be published in all relevant journals as well as on an own website (www.wvpc2005.org). The convention center and hotels in different categories have been reserved. A film on Istanbul was presented, and Dr. Gürer invited all participants to attend the XIVth Congress in his country in 2005. 
 

7. XVth WVPA Congress in 2007  

Prof. Kaleta announced that the Bureau voted by majority for Beijing, P.R. of China as venue for the XVth WVPA Congress. The Corresponding Secretary of the Chinese Branch Prof. Cui thanked the Bureau members for their vote, and invited the participants to attend the Congress on 13-16 September in 2007. He gave the audience an impression of Beijing and China as a congress venue by a Power point presentation. 
 

8. World Poultry Science Association (WPSA)  

The WPSA is interested in closer cooperation between the WPSA and the WVPA. The Treasurer of the WPSA, Dr. Francine Bradley presented some information on WPSA and made some proposals for cooperation between the two organizations like some type of joint membership and a joint congress. 
 

9. Nomination of Honorary Life Members  

The nomination of Prof. Dr. Hellmut Woernle, Germany as an Honorary Life Member recommended by the Bureau was approved by the participants of the General Business Meeting. 
 

10. Bart Rispens Award  

Prof. Kaleta informed the participants that the 2001 winner of the Bart Rispens Award was Dr. Andrew Olkowski, Saskatoon, Canada. Due to the postponement of the XIIth Congress Dr. Olkowski was not able to attend so that the Award will be presented to him by Dr. Ton Schat at this Congress during the Gala Dinner . 
 

11. Any other business:  

Dr. Eckroade as proxy of Dr. Rosenwald invited the participants to attend the 53rd Western Poultry Disease Conference in Sacramento, California, USA on March 7-9, 2004 (web site: http://www.cevs.ucdavis.edu/Cofred/Public/Aca/ConfHome.cfm?confid=179). 

Dr. Charlie Ibe from Nigeria recommends the possibility of paying registration and accommodation fees at WVPA Congresses not only with credit cards but also with other means, especially for participants from developing countries. 
 

Prof Kaleta thanked all participants for their attendance, and closed the Meeting at 17:50 hours.