February 6, 2014
Cobb Brazil completes expansion of quality control laboratory
Located in Guapiaçu area in the São Paulo region, the laboratory was opened in 2008 and is responsible for assessing the biosecurity level of poultry farms, hatcheries and feed mill to help maintain the high health status throughout the Cobb operation in Brazil.
"In addition to expanding our testing capacity, the investment improves the working in each laboratory section and significantly speeds some of our procedures," said Márcio Gereti, laboratory coordinator at Cobb-Vantress Brazil. "We're also optimising our database classification, increasing the information backup capacity to five years."
In addition to the serological assays, flock samples are analysed with microbiological and molecular testing using two different methods to ensure total reliability of the results.
"This combination of techniques for salmonella testing generates a final result within three days - two days sooner than with traditional laboratory techniques. Two days is a highly significant time in any case where intervention is needed," explained Leonardo Sestak, Cobb veterinarian responsible for avian health and laboratory management.
In addition to the entire Salmonella testing, the laboratory runs other bacteriological and molecular assays, antimicrobial susceptibility tests and mycological exams that help veterinarians to define the best procedure in the field.
The laboratory has the latest equipment such as a new ELISA plate washer machine that can rinse a whole batch of 96-well plates at a time and a mediaclave that can rapidly and safely prepare large volumes of media broth at a specific temperature.
There is regular coordination with the other Cobb Laboratories in the US and England, exchanging technical information about global poultry health issues as well as on-going improvements to laboratory routine.
Cobb-Vantress, Inc. is a poultry research and development company engaged in the production, improvement and sale of broiler breeding stock. Cobb is the world's oldest pedigree broiler breeding company. Cobb has grown into one of the world's leading suppliers of broiler breeding stock with distribution in 100 countries.
