THE problems of resistance to existing anti-parasite products and a lack of new ones means the challenge of parasite control will only increase.

I have just been to a research meeting in Edinburgh where a lot of the current research was presented. The science behind these projects was fascinating, even if it sometimes had me struggling to understand some of the really technical vaccine production.

The first topic was indeed the development of a vaccine for sheep scab, something that would be very useful indeed. It is promising work, with the experiments showing that the vaccine gives very close to natural immunity. A commercial product is some way off, and I suspect it will be used to reduce the number of treatments that sheep need, so lifting some of the pressure of resistance to the dips and injections we use.

A potentially very useful tool is a saliva test that might predict how resistant a sheep will be to stomach worms. There is also some work looking at how parasites like liver fluke affect the normal bacteria that live in the intestine. There is no direct application to reduce fluke, but it is all part of the general research.

One topic was a product that might be too good. This is a bacteria that essentially kills off stomach worms – by digesting them. It massively reduces the number on pasture, so one thought was to feed it to sheep ensuring that the worms in the dung would be killed off. Unfortunately, it also kills normal soil nematodes, so the research continues.

A really interesting one was to treat red mite in poultry, which can be a real problem in summer. The mites suck blood, but blood contains no vitamin B, so the mites rely on bacteria in their guts to make it for them. The idea is to edit the gene of these bacteria to prevent them making the vitamin, so the mites die.

The range of research is quite amazing some of which could make a real difference in the future. If I knew which, I’d be investing in them!

By Iain Richards - veterinary ecologist