A chicken takes 21 days and twelve hours to hatch, and conventional salmonella tests take from four to five days to complete - but this system takes only two to three days
Aviagen, a poultry breeding company, has turned to Igen technology to speed up the salmonella screening of its hatching facilities and farms.
The Pathigen salmonella kit is used as part of Aviagen's rigorous screening procedures which ensure its day-old chicks are delivered disease-free to over 65 countries worldwide.
Arlene Stephen, manager of the veterinary laboratory, explained: "The most important aspect of our screening programme is inevitably speed.
"A chicken takes 21 days and twelve hours to hatch and the monitoring schedule at Aviagen checks all of its farms for contamination every three weeks. "If a problem arises, there is a window of time to pull eggs out from the hatchers and stop the salmonella in its tracks. "Conventional tests take from four to five days to complete but using the Pathigen kit means results are ready in two to three, saving two crucial days in this precariously balanced schedule.
"We believe in trialling new products to the limit and we certainly put the Pathigen kit to the test.
"Our samples come from comparatively dirty farms and include environmental samples like shavings and cloacal samples from the birds themselves.
"This really tested the kit and certain adaptations had to be made to suit the way we used it, but it was very important for us that everything was working perfectly before we started using it for the 120,000 tests we routinely perform each year.
"In all, the trial period was very rigorous and lasted for nearly six months but the Pathigen kit passed all of our tests.
"Everything is complete now and we will begin to use the kit routinely in the next few weeks," she concluded.
