As I sit and write this, it’s a beautiful autumn day in England, and the harvest is well underway. At home in New Zealand, we are just starting to see signs of spring, after a long cold winter. Wherever you are in the world, there is always something agricultural to see and note that as always, the cycle of crop and animal production continues. However there are some interesting effects of the economic woes many countries have gone through recently (and many still are). Not least, for someone like me who travels around as part of my work, is the foreign exchange rate differences. Certainly the Euro and the Pound are both very weak against the NZ dollar – with the usual benefits and problems that entails. It will be interesting to see how international trade copes with this. Living in a country vastly dependent on agricultural exporting markets, I have certainly had many discussions with colleagues about how the strength of our currency could impact overseas sales of meat, milk and eggs. We shall wait and see.

As for the WPSJ, we continue to receive ever more varied papers – as you will see from this latest issue, with topics ranging from branding and economics, to mineral nutrition and GM feed materials. Our ratings this year have held well against the 1.6 high in 2010, which is very gratifying. However we are increasingly struggling, as are other journals, to find reviewers. This adds substantial amounts of time in processing a paper, so if any members out there are willing to help review papers in their area of expertise, do let us know in the Editorial Office.

Although many of you will receive this well after the event, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Professor Ravi Ravindran of Massey University on his recent award from PSA – the first non-American to receive such an honour. Ravi is a much respected poultry scientist who is highly active in his own research as well as post-graduate supervision, so this is very well deserved. I trust you enjoy this final issue of 2011 – we are already hard at work on the 2012 issues, including organising centennial papers from the individual working groups, looking at how each discipline in poultry science has changed over the lifetime of the WPSJ. Additionally we have the 2012 Wold Poultry Congress in Brazil to look forward to – and trust that will generate a lot of potential review papers in novel and emerging areas.

Dr Lucy Waldron

Editor