Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

As in previous years, the NANP Coordinating Committee (CC), Feed Composition Committee (FCC) and Modeling Committee (MC) conducted regular (typically monthly) virtual meetings and calls to discuss and plan activities being conducted in support of NRSP9 goals. Committee chairs and subcommittees (such as the Summit planning group) also continued to meet as needed throughout the year, reporting back to the CC. Coordinating Committee meetings focused on providing overall oversight to the project and serving as the primary liaison with the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) in support of efforts to update animal species nutrient utilization reports. The CC meetings throughout 2021-22 focused on developing social media to improve the reach of NANP, conducting a mid-term evaluation, communicating the impact of the program, planning for the next national Summit, and working toward alternatives to off-the-top Multistate funding. 

The FCC met regularly via phone conference throughout the year to discuss the continued development and improvement of the feed composition database.  The primary issue addressed by the FCC was the consolidation of the NASEMdatasets into a single database with reconciled feed ingredient terms across species. This is critical to having the database ready for upload of the poultry and swine datasets as those NASEM reports are completed, as well as ready for importing data from other sources, including commercial laboratories.

The MC also held regular conference calls throughout the year to discuss a wide range of issues related to expanding modeling tools available and improving usage across the research community. Major activities focused on the educational objectives of the committee, including both adding downloadable resources from the NANP website and holding modeling workshops at national meetings (e.g. ASAS Annual Meeting).

Overall, the activities of the NANP represent a time commitment of approximately 500 faculty hours and 2000 graduate student hours. This effort represents a significant leverage of the off the top Multistate funding provided to NANP through the Agricultural Experiment Stations.

Complete minutes from all Coordinating Committee meetings held this year are included in the attached.

1. A major effort of the NANP is to continually improve the database resources made available to registered users online. This work is necessary to ensure the usability and sustainability of the databases as research resources. The FCC completed the reformatting of ingredient datasets from the NASEM Nutrient Requirements of Beef Cattle report and the data scientists are working with the web developers to upload to the database. The updated data structure will allow for easier sorting of specific ingredients and attributes of interest by users. Significant progress was also made in preparing the NASEM Nutrient Requirements for Dairy Cattle report data in the same way. Species-specific terminology was reconciled with the common glossary of terms, further facilitating the creation of a consolidated, multi-species database.
2. The new database structure will facilitate updates of new datasets from commercial laboratories and other data sources and help with efforts to potentially monetize services provided by NANP.
3. NANP leadership worked with the Federation of Animal Science Societies to complete bylaws, articles of incorporation and tax documents toward establishing 501(c)3 status for NANP. This is an important step toward the business plan for leveraging off-the-top funding.
4. A nutrition modeling workshop was held in conjunction with the annual ASAS meeting on June 26, 2022 to help convey the concepts needed and approaches available for developing, parameterizing and evaluating nutrient models needed for animal research. The in-person workshop had 45 participants and included hands-on sessions in addition to lectures and demonstrations.  
5. The social media plan developed last year has been initiated with the goal of driving new users to the NANP website and highlighting accomplishments of the program. Though implementation only recently started, analytics indicate over 230 users have accessed NANP social media via Facebook and LinkedIn.
6. The CC engaged an external evaluator to assess progress toward meeting project objectives and documenting evidences of impact on research. The report indicates significant progress toward or accomplishment of 4 of the 6 objectives within the first 2 years of the project. Impacts from the report are summarized below.  
7. The CC continued planning for the next national NANP Summit, titled “Producing Healthy Diets for Sustainable Animal Systems”, to be held on Wednesday, April 12, 2023 at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. The intent of this 3^rd national NANP summit is to facilitate intense discussion by experts on the evaluation of the use of animals to sustainably provide for healthy human diets. A draft agenda for the summit is included in the attachments.

Jacobs, M., A. Remus, C. Gaillard, H. M. Menendez, III, L. O. Tedeschi, S. Neethirajan, and J. L. Ellis. 2022. ASAS-NANP SYMPOSIUM: MATHEMATICAL MODELING IN ANIMAL NUTRITION: Limitations and potential next steps for modeling and modelers in the animal sciences. J. Anim. Sci. 100 (6):1-15. doi: 10.1093/jas/skac132

Menendez, H. M., III, J. R. Brennan, C. Gaillard, K. Ehlert, J. Quintana, S. Neethirajan, A. Remus, M. Jacobs, I. A. M. A. Teixeira, B. L. Turner, and L. O. Tedeschi. 2022. ASAS-NANP SYMPOSIUM: MATHEMATICAL MODELING IN ANIMAL NUTRITION: Opportunities and challenges of confined and extensive precision livestock production. J. Anim. Sci. 100 (6):1-19. doi: 10.1093/jas/skac160

Tedeschi, L. O. 2022. ASAS-NANP SYMPOSIUM: MATHEMATICAL MODELING IN ANIMAL NUTRITION: The progression of data analytics and artificial intelligence in support of sustainable development in animal science. J. Anim. Sci. 100 (6):1-11. doi: 10.1093/jas/skac111