Abstract
For the fifth year in succession, the ESFM held a special feline symposium at the annual British Small Animal Veterinary Association Congress in Birmingham. These symposia have been consistently well attended, and each year the ESFM has managed to provide a varied lecture program with a panel of internationally renowned speakers. This year was no exception, and the ESFM symposium proved to be one of the most popular of the many organised on the Wednesday prior to the main congress programme.
Although these symposia have been well received, inevitably many veterinarians interested in the subjects will not have had the opportunity to attend the congress, and one of the recent objectives of ESFM has been to publish proceedings from the symposia that it organises, thus enabling the wider dissemination of valuable and topical information. To this end, we are delighted that in this issue of JFMS we are able to include the proceedings from the ESFM Symposium at BSAVA Congress this year. These papers are not in the normal style of the journal, simply because they are proceedings in which individual experience and style can be expressed. However, all have undergone a review process to ensure the validity of the content. We hope and trust that these proceedings will be a valuable resource as we strive to meet the suggestions received and the aims of the Society. The ESFM also organised a feline symposium at the WSAVA meeting held in Amsterdam in April, and we plan to publish the proceedings from that congress in a subsequent issue of the journal.
At the close of the ESFM symposium held in Birmingham, the AGM of the Society was held and the minutes of this are published in the Feline Focus section of this issue of the Journal. After 3 years of hard work Prof Marian Horzinek retired as president of the society, and the Society gratefully acknowledged his hard work and the dedication he has brought to his role. Happily, Marian agreed to stay on as a member of the ESFM executive committee in the role of ‘Board of Representatives Co-ordinator’. Succeeding Prof Horzinek as president, the Society elected Prof Stefano Romagnoli from the University of Piza. Stefano has already been heavily involved with ESFM and we are delighted that he has accepted the new position. Stefano is extremely enthusiastic and able—we welcome him as our new president and look forward to the future development of the ESFM under his leadership.