£500k grant mite be a good idea

A grant worth almost half a million pounds has been awarded to the Moredun Research Institute to develop a novel way of studying poultry red mites which greatly reduces the number of hens required for research purposes.

In the commercial world, infestation of hen houses with the mites – which feed on the blood of birds – is a major animal welfare and economic problem for the egg-producing industry internationally, and multiple groups worldwide are working to develop new control methods.

Currently, in order to supply mites for research programmes, donor hens must be infested with the parasite to provide sufficient numbers of mites to be used for laboratory or field studies.

The £483,000 grant from the National Centre Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3RS) – which funds work to reduce the number of animals involved in research –will be aimed at establish in ga laboratory colony of red mites and develop a novel feeding method which removes the need to use infested hens.

Preliminary work has met with success by feeding the mites on blood from gee se–which can safely donate 30 times more than hens – through a disposable synthetic skin-like membrane.

Moredun’s Dr Francesca Nunn said that by using this system, the number of hens required for such research could be reduced by 90 per year per year.

“In addition, welfare standards will be increased by removing the need for hens to be continuously infested with the parasites for prolonged periods,” she said.