As part of Winterbotham Darby’s European Farm Partnership, they caught up with Charles ‘Chick’ Olsson, co-founder of Medical Ethics, to find out more about what Medical Ethics do and why they want to be a part of the EFP.
“Our vision is to develop and deliver highly effective, safe, affordable and practical pain relief products to prevent pain and minimise suffering associated with wounds in humans, livestock and companion animals.”
Chick Olsson:
We’re an Australian Research and Development company, which was set up in 2005. Primarily we started life to deliver pain management and wound care technology to animals but are now looking to see how we can expand that to humans too.
We have a product called Tri-Solfen, which is a combination of wound care and pain relief which was developed by our Technical Director, Meredith Sheil. Meredith worked as a paediatric cardiologist, but was also a sheep farmer too. She had observed lambs, following tail-docking, in pain and wanted to see if human medicine could be adapted to animal medication. The commonality here is that neither animals nor children can express if and how much pain they are experiencing.
So she developed Tri-Solfen, a product which can be applied topically to the site of a wound (such a docked tail) which contains:
These are administrated via a spray and stay gel which sticks to the surface of the wound.
Since our inception Tri-Solfen has been used on over 80 million farm animals in the sheep and cattle sector in Australia and New Zealand.
We became involved in the UK owing to interest shown in us by our partner, Dechra, and other UK companies such as Winterbotham Darby. Recently, 33% of our company was purchased by Dechra, which allows us to expand internationally into every livestock sector.
Our projects are looking at registering Tri-Solfen in UK and EU for all animal species, as well as receiving significant interest from the human health market in Wales. Trisolfen has great potential to be used not only in the majority of necessary farm surgeries, but will also be developed further for human wounds in many areas such as hospital triage and defence forces.
We’re interested in working with Winterbotham Darby because they have shown a real interest in supporting best animal welfare practices with a group of production partners and farms. Specifically with their focus on pigs we could look to reduce pain following piglet castration. Better welfare, such as pain-free surgery for farmed animals resonates with consumers as well as being more profitable for farmers. So it’s a win/win for our animals, farmers and consumers.
We’re excited to share this exciting new research and how it can be developed into welfare programs that we’re creating with Winterbotham Darby. We’re soon to start some trials in Europe, using Tri-Solfen, with a view to obtaining EU approval.
Just like Winterbotham Darby, we’re committed to taking better care of farmed animals, right through the whole supply chain.
Read more about Tri-Solfen® here.
Winterbotham Darby is a fast-growing food business that predominantly supplies own-label chilled food produced in Europe to the major supermarket chains in the UK. Established in 1962 we have been at the forefront of categories like continental meats, chilled olives, antipasti and continental morning goods that have fundamentally changed the eating habits of the UK. As well as our Deli Solutions and Alatoni manufacturing sites, we work closely with over 80 partnering production sites across Europe and provide end-to-end solutions for retailers, from factory auditing and product development to packaging design and category management.
We already count many of the leading UK supermarket chains as customers and we are targeting international growth through similar partnerships with retailers around Europe and beyond. We also have a growing foodservice business that includes restaurant chains, sandwich outlets and food producers. Outside of our heartland of chilled food, we have significant business in ambient bakery and have now expanded in to frozen foods as well.
Our strap-line ‘inspire, create, taste’ embodies everything that we do. Our team, whether from a retail, food service or food production background has a great passion for food and a desire to innovate.