Collaboration given £1.6m boost
Farmers with livestock suffering from health problems have been promised quicker response times from a new veterinary laboratory opened yesterday.
The new lab, costing £1.6 million, is based at the Moredun Research Institute at the Pentlands Science Park south of Edinburgh and is the first fruit of a collaboration between Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) and the world renowned animal health centre, the Moredun Research Institute.
In carrying out the opening ceremony, Mairi Gougeon MSP, the minister for rural affairs and the natural environment, said the new laboratory had the capacity to analyse more than a million samples a year.
In addition to more tests being carried out thanks to new equipment and faster processes, the time taken to carry out longer tests, such as culturing bacteria, can now be done in under two days rather than six as previously was the case.
The new facility brings together SRUC’S diagnostic and analytical teams from a number of smaller units previously operating in the Midlothian area, Perthshire and the Borders.
The funding for the new laboratory came through a low-cost loan from the Scottish Funding Council’s Financial Transactions Programme
Since his arrival as principal of SRUC two years ago, Wayne Powell has espoused collaboration between research institutes as the future of rural technology research for Scotland.
“Animal health is a cornerstone of a thriving rural economy and the new SRUC Veterinary and Analytical Laboratory offers a step-change in disease surveillance for the whole of the country,” he said.
He added working with Moredun staff in the new centre offered “new opportunities for research and collaboration”.