10/15/2021: 

As leading organisation in animal health we would be pleased to meet you at VIV MEA 2021 in Hall 10 booth V306. Our team, including Klaas van Aken, Berend Oosterhuis, Ellen Koetsier and Mattheus Hekman, will discuss and share ideas on how you can benefit from our expertise through applied research projects. They can also tell you more about disease control programmes for cattle, swine, poultry and goats. For more information come meet us at our booth V036 in Hall 10.  

Holland Inspiration Seminar

We also participate at the event "The Holland Inspiration Seminar". The Holland Inspiration Seminar event at VIV MEA is initiated by 'HubOranje' in collaboration with VIV. On november 24th from 16:00 untill 18:00 seven specialists from different disciplines share their knowledge and vision about sustainable and profitable livestock farming. Our GD expert Mattheus Hekman will give a presentation regarding the VIR-check: 'A clean house pays back: An innovative tool to help you improve cleaning & disinfection' in Capital Suite 15. You can the expert at the Holland Inspiration square, Hall 10 Booth V039.

Mattheus Hekman about VIR-check

Hygiene and biosecurity is of utmost importance for a good cycle: when no pathogen will reach the flock, no harm will be done to the flock. In real life this is hard to achieve and very expensive (ie SPF). For commercial flocks the costs for such standards are too high, a workable equilibrium should be found.

Broiler production is running on a thin line with a lot of time pressure for the cleaning and disinfection (C&D). Pathogenic micro-organisms are a continuous threat as they can cause illness, immunosuppression and poor performance. A good start of a broiler flock begins with healthy chicks in a clean house.

A check of the efficacy of C&D is often missing, mainly because tools are lacking. Visual inspection doesn’t give information on the success of the disinfection, only on cleaning. Bacterial sampling and ATP-testing provides more information about the results of disinfection regarding bacteria, but representativeness is questionable as only very small parts of the broiler house are sampled.

GD developed an innovative and easy test to check if C&D had the desired result. The golden test would sample the whole house and check for pathogens most resistant to disinfectants. With VIR-check GD comes close to these parameters.

The VIR-checks tests for five different naked viruses at day 6-7 of life taken by cloacal swabs; the broilers act as incubators in the first week of life (the whole house is sampled by the broilers from day one) and naked viruses are very resistant micro-organisms: when these are killed by disinfection, also the more sensitive gram-positive and -negative bacteria and enveloped viruses are expected to be destroyed.

With a simple test and easy to apply test, cleaning and disinfection can be checked in a sophisticated way now in all broiler houses.

Read more about VIR-check