HER ROYAL Highness, The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, visited the Moredun Research Institute this week to find out how creative design has been applied to benefit the health and welfare of livestock, and help celebrate Scotland’s year of Innovation, Architecture and Design.

Held at Pentlands Science Park, headquarters of the Moredun Foundation and Moredun Research Institute, the event highlighted the contribution of design and collaboration to produce new products, technologies and creative communication tools to improve the health and welfare of livestock, both in Scotland and across the world.

Princess Anne was joined by over 100 representatives from the livestock and agricultural industries and government and research communities to listen to some case studies presented by scientists Dr Valentina Busin, Dr Dan Price and Dr Thomas Tzelos.

Dr Busin discussed her work, in collaboration with Heriot Watt University, which looked at how smart engineering has enabled the design of a rapid pen-side diagnostic test for sheep scab, a device that helps to completely avoid the need for laboratory testing for illness, meaning that farmers can get quicker results at a more effective cost.

Dr Price described how application of protein expression technologies had revolutionised the development of new vaccines against nematode worms. Finally, Dr Tzelos presented a short animated film on parasite control and prevention of drug resistance, which was previously showcased at the Royal Highland Show. That video can be viewed by visiting this link: https://youtu.be/nV7ItbKCKhE.

Moredun Foundation chairman Ian Duncan Millar commented: “Moredun is delighted to welcome Princess Anne to our event, where we are showcasing this very exciting new research, conducted by our early career scientists, showing the benefits of applying innovative design to improve the health and welfare of livestock."

In a surprise turn of events, a special award, the Bi-centenary trophy, was also presented to Moredun scientific director Professor Julie Fitzpatrick from the Royal Smithfield Club in recognition of her services to the industry, which Her Majesty agreed to present.

Royal Smithfield Club president, Andrew Gilmour, said: "We wanted to present this trophy to Julie for all that she has done for Moredun. It is a major recognition of all that she has done for the meat and livestock industries."

The trophy is a silver Armada dish, surrounded by 25 gold guineas, each of which was given by a person, or company, with long association with the club, the best known being the late Queen Mother, who was president of The Royal Smithfield Show in 1983 and from 1987 to 2001.

During the visit, Princess Anne also met other guests, including a group of post-graduate students, representatives from the farming industry, designers, the research organisations and the Equine Grass Sickness charity, before receiving a private tour of the laboratories at the institute, where she met scientists involved in livestock disease surveillance and diagnostics, the E.coli research group and the Johne’s disease research collaboration.