RESEARCH ▶▶▶
Scotland: A pioneering place for poultry
Scotland is arguably established as one of the world’s best spots for avian research. Poultry World rounds up some recent developments and finds three reasons that make Scotland a pioneering place.
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The facility has trial pens for broilers, turkeys and laying hens.
BY JAKE DAVIES
n a nondescript estate just outside Edinburgh, Scotland, you can find some of the world’s most advanced research facilities for livestock, The Roslin Institute, and it is far from the only facility
in the country working to improve poultry research. Aviagen has its headquarters nearby and breeding facilities in the country, as do other genetics firms. And a new research cen- tre opened its doors in early June that is thought to be the largest of its kind. It is worth considering the geography of Scotland for a moment. As a developed country it has good transport access but is relatively remote when compared with the rest of Europe, making it good for biosecurity. And as fa- cilities have sprung up over time, it has made sense to build other research centres close by, to take advantage of poten- tial collaboration. Here are three reasons a poultry research should consider Scotland as the place to be.
Allermuir Avian Innovation & Skills Centre This centre, which replaced an older research facility in
Auchencruive, close to Glasgow, represents a £5.6m (€ 6.2m) investment in poultry science. It is primarily a trial facility for feed and behaviour studies into broilers, layers and turkeys, and the 144-pen research room is thought to be the largest of its kind in Europe. It also has windows, common to many poultry farms in Europe today. The site also has smaller rooms for behavioural trials, a replica small-scale colony egg production unit and other trial facilities. It is close to research facilities at Scotland’s Rural College’s (SRUC) Bush Estate and Easter Howgate campuses. It is also close to the Roslin Institute which is pioneering genetic re- search into poultry. Jos Houdijk, who runs the facility, says: “One of the big advantages we have is that, being so close to other research centres we will be able to achieve synergies that can’t be replicated elsewhere.” Once fully operational about 30-35 people will work on the site. A small slaughter- house is also being built in partnership with Aviagen on the site. About 70% of the trial work will be for commercial cli- ents, according to the site’s team leader Prof Houdijk. He add- ed that, of those trials, more than half would be related to feed-additive studies that examine the impact of different products on gut health. The first research projects will look at novel antimicrobials impacts on performance and gut microbiome, and the role of amino acid nutrition on gut health. Speaking at the opening of the event, the SRUC’s principle and chief executive Profes- sor Wayne Powell said: “The Allermuir Avian Innovation and Skills Centre will be of huge benefit to Scotland, the United Kingdom and globally. The people and facilities based here will help attract research investment from across the world. “CIEL and Innovate UK are excellent partners in the project and I’d also like to thank the Scottish Funding Council for its support. “A future with industry, researchers and governments work- ing in closer collaboration is how we will meet the global challenges facing society. “Partnerships like Allermuir Avian Innovation and Skills Centre is the model we need to take to support growth the economy.” The UK’s Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock invest- ed £1.9 million (€ 2.1m) in the new centre, with funding from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency. SRUC invested £3.6 million (€ 4m) with support from the Scottish Government’s Funding Council’s Financial Transactions Programme.
28 ▶ POULTRY WORLD | No. 6, 2019
PHOTOS: CHRIS WATT
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