Battle is on to control global parasitic epidemic

Scientists and research workers across Europe, including the world-renowned Moredun Research Institute, will combine in a three-year project aimed at producing new strategies to deal with increasing levels of parasitic worm resistance.

Infection with parasitic worms represents a significant economic and welfare burden to the European livestock industry. It has been estimated that gastro-intestinal worms costs the livestock industry many millions of pounds each year in lost production.

The increasing prevalence of wormer resistance now being found in commercial cattle and sheep farms means that current control programmes based on routine anthelmintic treatment, are not only costly but are unsustainable in the longer-term.

The Gloworm project will investigate the effects of global change on parasitic worms in sheep and cattle and try to develop realistic new control strategies for European livestock farmers.

Dr Fiona Kenyon and Dr Philip Skuce, both senior parasitologists at Moredun, who will be leading the project in this country, were optimistic that the project would increase understanding of how global change affected endemic parasitic diseases of livestock. They hoped the outcome would be the provision of practical and sustainable control options for European farmers.

The priorities for the project include improved diagnostic tests, and tools for their interpretation as well as improving surveillance of parasitic worm infections levels right across Europe.

The project should also supply farmers with improved, up-to-date, information and bring forward new control strategies including practical on field systems.

l With the 2012 Royal Highland Show now only three months away, the annual event has been endorsed with the Best Event in Scotland award in the National Outdoor Event Association’s scheme.

Show manager David Dunsmuir after picking up the award at NOEA’s annual convention in Birmingham described it as an honour as it demonstrated that the Highland Show was a major player in the sector

“We now need to build on these this success and ensure that this year’s Royal Highland Show is once again one of the best events in Scotland.” Average attendances at the show in recent years stand at well over 180,000 with a record in 2010 of 187,644.

Dunsmuir claimed that independent studies had concluded that the economic impact of the show locally, regionally and nationally was around £70 million.

The organisers, the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland (RHASS), were established in 1784 and held their first show in 1822 in Edinburgh’s Canongate on a site now occupied by the Scottish Parliament.

The 2012 show, which will be staged from 21-24 June, will be the 172nd and the 52nd to be held at the permanent showground at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Edinburgh.