Greetings to the ARPAS membership,

I am looking forward to an exciting year of advancement for ARPAS and hope to serve you well as your president for this year. Over 25 years ago I became a member of ARPAS and then in 1995 became a certified diplomat in ACAS. I believed in the future of ARPAS then and continue to have that faith as we move forward.

I want to thank Dr. Michael Galyean for his service and leadership as president last year. I only hope I can fill his shoes adequately. I will be leaning on Michael, Ken Cummings, Bob Wettemann, and Jeremy Holzner for their guidance and advice through the coming year. I also want to encourage the ARPAS Executive Committee to continue their strong work efforts in guiding this society.

ARPAS is strong and growing. I want to commend the ARPAS Foundation and its chairman, Dr. William Braman, for its support in bringing new members to the society. It was a real innovation to use Foundation funds to cover the ARPAS exam fees for quiz bowl undergraduate and graduate students at JAM 2014. This opens the door for many financially struggling students to easily evaluate the benefits of ARPAS membership.

With regard to supporting members and their ability to obtain qualifying CEU credits, I want to commend Dr. Galyean for initiating discussions with the American Society of Animal Science on the development of the Career Learning Center project. This is now a vehicle that will allow members to obtain CEUs online by watching symposia presentations that they might not have been able to attend in person. This is a new era in CEU accreditation that ARPAS is venturing into with ASAS. My ultimate hope is that we will be able to extend this opportunity with other societies such as the American Dairy Science Association, Poultry Science Association and Equine Science Society. 

I was extremely pleased with the attendance and level of presentations at this year’s ARPAS symposium on ethics in the livestock industry. The presentations by all speakers were interesting and stimulated discussion long past the allotted symposium time. I specifically want to thank our speakers, Dr. Dwain Bunting, ADM, Dr. Michael Galyean, Texas Tech University, Dr. Chris Ashworth, Elanco, and Dr. Mika Alewynse, CVM/FDA for their presentations; with an extra thanks to Dwain for his help in pulling this symposium put together.

This coming year we will have some new challenges and decisions to be made regarding future meetings and symposia. I will be looking for input from the membership on the best direction to steer the society. I encourage each and everyone of you to respond to upcoming surveys and questionnaires. If anyone has any comments or questions about ARPAS please contact me. I am looking forward to an exciting term as your president.

Sincerely,
Jack Garrett, Ph.D., Dipl. ACAS
President, ARPAS