OPENING ADRESS OF PROF.DR. M.Ihsan SOYSAL
Chairman of the First Joint Meeting of Departments of Animal Science of the Balkan Countries which held in Tekirdağ. 6-8.July.2001

  Honored Guest Ladies and Gentilmen on behalf of the organizing committe of the first Balkan Conferance on animal production it is great pleasure and honour for me to greet almost hundred collegues attending this conference from all over the Balkan countries region.

  First of all I would like to extend our cordial welcome to all of you. I am very sure that everyone in TURKIYE concerned with this conferance is happy and proud to be host at this conference for the first  time in European part of TURKIYE. We are also very hapy and pleased to of organize and to host to the first Balkan Conferance on Animal Production. Total Eigthy(80) animal scientist and their accompanied persons gathered in Tekirdağ from your country of the Balkan Region. The number of author was two hundred and twenty(220) average number of author per paper is three aproxinatily.

  Now My congratulations goes to the everyone and every supporters, participants whose made this meeting possible. First of all to the president of Trakya University, Governor of the city. Mayor of the municipitality, executive wice prosident of EAAP, Dean of faculty, my collegues of the departments and in the faculty and all distinguished directors of several institutions and also distinguished represantatives of the press and media whose not left us alone and supported very much the organisation of the conference.

  As you may be aware of Turkiye a acountry where east and west met. You and we are from most eastern part of Europe and we are from most western part of Asian so we are gathered to form multilateral medium to determine the possibilities of collobration among Balkan countries. We hope you can find a good opportunity to establish a new scientific relations.

  The Turkish animal scientist as of my collegues, concerned with this conferance are of one mind in their desire to contribute to human welfare through international cooperation in and starting from regional cooperation in Balkan in this field of science like as your desire.

  As you know the outlock on the world foof situation seems very grim in this century and provide mankind with milk, meat and other animal products by increasing productivity of animals is of basic importance for every nation of world.

  Therefore the search and identification of most appropriate technology of animal production under the diversified socioeconomic conditions of the various region of world such as Balkan are necessary steps for scientific progress and the results and findings are being utilized for the benefit of animal production.

  I am greatly delighted to be able to extend the greeting of Turkish Animal Scientists to the distinquished participants of the first Balkan Conferance on Animal production there is groving awareness in the world of the need for promoting animal production so as to improve the level of nutrition of the increasing population.

  I would like to hope to encourage all of you to make use of this conferance to present and rices various problems found in your course of study both in fundemantal and applied field and this to work together in development of animal production applying human ideas to humen objectives.

  I hope that during next few day of your stay you will deeper your understanding of Turkiye and the Turkish culture and enjoy your stay in TURKIYE.

  I would like to finish my adres with the poem of famous humanist Turkish poet Yunus Emre He says in his poetic adres that.

   ''Come let us all be friends for one''
   ''Let us make life easy on us''
   ''Let us love and be loved''
   ''The world shall be left to noone.''

  Thank you for your attentions...

Prof.Dr.M.Ihsan SOYSAL
Chairman of the meeting; Head of Department
of Animal Science of the Faculty of Agriculture
of the Trakya University  Tekirdağ-TURKIYE

OPENING ADRES OF RECTOR OF TRAKYA UNI. OSMAN INCI


Ladies and Gentilmen,

I would like to start my speech by thanking you for your participation on the First Joint Meeting of 
Departments of Animal Science of Balkan Countries. we as Trakya University, hope to have co-operation 
with the Balkan Universities on Agriculture and AnimalBreeding as well as on all fields. Trakya University is a
regional university and is distributed to all Thrace region. If the ecological and social features of Thrace Region
are taken into consideration, it can be easily seen that exceeding trans-border sustainability is going on. 
Therefore, it will be useful to carry out joint projects on studying the problems of this region and find out ways
for solutions.

Dear guests, Thrace Region has an important role on the national agriculture and animal breeding affairs. 
Although, the animal yield level of our country is low. Thrace Region has a high level of yield of animal production 
genotypes and is at the level of EU Countries. The agricultural population is about 22 million and this is the 45%
of the total population of our country. The part of agriculture in The Gross national product in our country is 42.3%,
in European countries. This level is 19.2% in Poland and 4.4% in France. As it can be seen from these percentages,
the population dealing with agriculture is high, compared to the EU countries. The proportion shall decrease in the 
following periods. However; because of rural migration, problems occuring in metro and megapoles do not seem to be 
precautions taken for the solution of this problem.. Thus; instead of total migration from the rural areas to the
big cities, it is a more logical way to choose the method of setting agriculture-based industrial branches in 
rural areas. While choosing this way, it is necessary to work up the soil and water resources which form a natural 
resource for agriculture, on sustainable means Therefore; agriculture shold be brought to a poly-culture form and 
animal breeding sector should be integrated into this form. It is a fact that animal breeding sector is enduring 
hard times in our country. Just as, animal product consumption level is quite low compared to the EU countries.
The main problems are the input costs being high and the genotypical factors. According to the statics of 1999, 
there are 11 million cattle, 43 million sheep and 7.5 million goats in our country. Taking these data, our country 
is among 20 countries from the point of view of animal population in the world and in Europe Nevertheless the yield 
per animal unit is low. Total cattle meat production is 364.000 tonnes, where as total cattle milk production is 
9.9 million tonnes in our country. The optimistic estimation of milk yield per animal unit of cattle is 2 tonnes.
However, the result in Thrace region is 7 tonnes, which is at the level of European countries. In spite of all these
negative aspects, Thrace Region has ideal conditions from the agricultural areas be provided for pasture plants for 
profitable animal breeding through field usage and production planing or breeding the current pasture fields.

Ladies and gentlemen, I both hope and wish that you would leave our country with good memories, new ideas. I also 
hope that our guests from other countries will submit our good wishes to their nations.


Prof.Dr. Osman INCI
Rector of TRAKYA UNI.

Ladies and gentlemen,

First  I would like to mention how proud I feel myself as a mayor due to international meeting being held in Tekirdağ.

I am also very glad to be invited to such a meeting not only as a mayor but also as a farmer and animal breeder.

Our hope is that the organisation led by Trakya University, Tekirdağ Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Animal
Science will be heldperiodically in the following years.

I would like to thank to the Department of Animal Science for their success on animal breeding studies carried out in Tekirdağ.

Animal Breeding plays an important role in the economy of our city. Thus, I beleive that this meeting held by
important scientist will result with topical information about animal based protein production, which is the most important 
step of the nutrition of our people, on a more effective and scientific platform.

I think that two important topics grow through sharing: Love and knowledge. I am glad to know that these topics
will be shared in this meeting.

As a mayor, my wish is to see Tekirdağ as a centre of Culture and Education. These kind of scientific meetings make us
approach to this wish step by step. I would especially like to thank to Trakya University, Tekirdağ Faculty
of Agriculture and Head of Department of Animal Science for their contribution to this wish.

I also would like to mention that I am very proud of Tekirdağ being the centre of ''Trakyakent'' Regional Management 
Community as a Balkan City. As it is known, this community is the first official organisation providing a collaboration 
between Europe and Turkey. This community, provides collaboration as East-West Thrace Municipalities-Trakyakent between
the local administrations on various topics as well as on agriculture of members of European Council. It also contributes 
to the stability and good neighbourship between these members.

Therefore, I would like to send my greetings especially to Prof.Dr.M.Ihsan SOYSAL, the organising committee and all the 
collaborating administrations for their support on the realisation of BALNIMALCON-2001.

Dear neighbours of TURKEY; I would like to thank you all for the development of our relations both on scientific 
and humanistic feelings.

I would finally like to send the greetings of our nation to yours through the warm friendliness I hope to come out
at this meeting. Welcome to TURKEY.


Osman TABAK
Mayor of Tekirdağ