Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RAID (A Veterinary Decision Support System by Rapid Bacterial Infection Detection (RAID))
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2016-11-01 al 2017-02-28
One of the most important challenges of humanity is to supply healthy food for the growing population. In order to supply enough meat, intensive animal growing is carried out world-wide. These technologies, however, involve several risks, for example broiler chickens produced for their meet in closed rearing houses, often suffer bacterial infections, which is the major cause of the high mortality in chicken farming. In the past, these animals were feed with antibiotic containing feedstuff for prevention. In the European Union antibiotics can only be added to animals after diagnosis by a veterinarian. The incontrovertible proof of bacterial infection may take 24 to 48 hours by techniques applied today. Our objective is to commercialize a Veterinary Decision Support System (RAID), which is able to detect bacterial infection within 3 hours at affordable cost in poultry (mainly Broiler chicken) farming.
Our company, Tonosoft is providing R&D services to our clients in chemistry method development, biotechnological process development and analytical chemistry method developments. In the last 3 years, we developed a Mass Spectroscopy (MS) based method for the detection of compounds found on the outer surface of the bacterium cell (at high concertation) and use them for bacterial identification as “fingerprints”. In this Phase 1 project we confirmed the technical feasibility and economic viability of our project. We carried out detailed validation both by mathematical modelling and independent experiments. We made market assessment and carried out interviews with potential endures. We shall exploit the project results towards chicken farmers and veterinarians, as a web passed decision support tool.
In the day to day farming practice, a veterinarian must examine ill or deceased animals and prove the bacterial infection before applying any antibiotics. This proof, however, requires bacteriological culturing under laboratory conditions, which takes 12 to 48 hours. By the RAID method bacterial infection can be detected during 3 hours with more than 90% overall accuracy. The key innovation of our development is the intelligent algorithm that can separate the complicated mixed spectral signal of “bacterial fingerprints” and the software based on this algorithm. Our project will impact on the European chicken farming industry and results in safer food by less and better justified usage of antibiotics in feed stuff.