Atlanta is not only known to be the city of Coca Cola, CNN and having the world’s largest aquarium but also for the Poultry Exposition which takes place every year in January. Prior to the Poultry Expo, the International Poultry Scientific Forum was held from 25th-26th of January in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. During the two days oral presentations and posters in the scientific fields of physiology, pathology, processing & products, nutrition, avian diseases and environment & management were presented.

In the field of nutrition it is noteworthy that probiotics gain more interest year after year. Counting the number of contributions (oral and poster presentations) probiotics and direct-fed microbials are already number 2 after feed enzymes (see figure). But also other Natural Growth Promoters like organic acid, plant extracts and yeast derivatives were subject of scientific presentations.

The BIOMIN Research Center was represented by Sabine Henikl with an oral presentation about “the challenge of probiotic effect of in vitro verification” and a poster presentation about “active cells versus colony forming units”. Other poster presentations by BIOMIN were about “The occurrence of mycotoxins in 2007” and “Probiotics as an alternative to growth promoters in broiler diets” by Verena Starkl and Gino Lorenzoni. Additionally Verena Starkl presented her research about the effects of Mycofix^® Plus in a study with mycotoxin challenged laying hens.