Science ViSION

Delivering a European Centre of Excellence in Animal Sciences and Food Security

The overall aim of the Roslin Innovation Centre is to provide an iconic gateway building that will bring together the clinical teaching, research and enterprise activities into a vibrant, interactive core at the heart of the Easter Bush Campus.

Sustainable solutions

The Easter Bush Campus allows delivery of solutions to global challenges within livestock industries and both veterinary and human medicine.

Livestock farming remains a major industry in the UK, crucial to the life and sustainability of rural communities. Sustainable increases in the productivity of the agriculture sector are required to address the future food security of the UK and the world.

research community

A vital and sustainable research community like Easter Bush Research Consortium (EBRC) has a substantial momentum for future development. The vision for the next five years is to build the European Centre of Excellence in Animal Bioscience and to create alongside it a pre-eminent capability for interdisciplinary research on farming systems and rural structures.  

Continued investment in buildings and people and initiatives that bring these inputs together to meet the needs of a changing world and the UK research community will help to in the achievement of this vision.



Cow representing animal bioscience

the future

The Easter Bush Campus already has the largest concentration of animal science related expertise anywhere in Europe. 

Further growth will cement world-leading capacity to address livestock improvement, food security and alleviation of poverty in developing countries.

food security

We have an urgent window of time to meet the increasing demand for meat, milk and eggs, the growth of the middle classes and the need to feed more with less.

Transcript Extract Bill Gates, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lord Speaker Lecture, House of Lords, 10 November 2014:

Canadian Association of Diploma in Agriculture Programs (CADAP) says if African population grows as we know it’s going to grow and agriculture develops at its current rate of progress then sub-Saharan Africa will only be producing 13% of its food by 2050 leading to anarchy and wars. 

Improved agriculture is one of the best tools we have.

Bill Gates’ thinking to do differently, to avert this disaster or seize this opportunity to kick start sub Saharan Africa economy and boost what‘s going on is:

“African productivity is less than a quarter of what you’d see in Europe and the United States, huge opportunities for productive increases. 

If you look at the livestock sector that was mentioned, actually …we have Edinburgh as kind of a world capital for livestock health and genetics… and things like that, so …we have a lot or partners there [Edinburgh] that are helping us… in this.

That’s an area where by improving the genetics, improving the health, which again is vaccines, but animal vaccines, we ought to be able to see dramatic improvements in African productivity… ”