AT THE HEART OFCIS
This issue, Dena Snidall an executive of CIS at the Laboratory is giving an overview on the business and work that is ongoing at CIS
ecognised as one of the leading laboratories of its type in both Europe and the World, Cattle Information Services’ Speir House, Telford, is entering it’s fourth year of operation with an expanded range of services and testing capability. Named after John Speir, the founder of milk recording in the UK, the lab opened in 2012 with state of the art equipment and has since developed a highly reliable quality management system which has allowed CIS to gain full accreditation to IEC ISO 17025:2005 while fulfilling customer and regulatory requirements. In addition CIS’ systems and services have been further developed based on the needs of customers to ensure a robust, reliable service is in place. To ensure full traceability, each milk sample is uniquely coded from the time it is collected on farm to the end of the process when results are reported. Once all requested tests have been performed, that unique code will not be used again. Milk holds a wealth of valuable information which a farm can use to make strategic decisions about how to manage each individual animal or the herd as a whole. It is CIS’ aim to continuously find the best way to extract as much information as possible.
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For compositional testing the system is fully automated using state of the art equipment to ensure each sample is processed uniformly to the highest standard. Each instrument has the capability of processing 600 samples an hour which minimises the turnaround time. Alongside this, the highly developed quality system gives full confidence in each result. This process has been championed worldwide with requests from many European and international laboratories to come and see the system first hand. Aside from standard milk compositional testing CIS also offers a full suite of health tests, reflecting the growing importance of health status. With the increase of different initiatives and schemes promoting animal health and welfare, CIS’ animal health department is continuously growing.
Since the lab has opened the health testing department has been renovated and expanded to allow for a well organised flow station. This ensures the integrity of every sample which is essential with such a large number of samples being processed on a daily basis for a multitude of tests this is essential. All tests are Elisa based tests conducted under strict conditions by highly competent staff.
Since gaining accreditation the scope of CIS’ testing has been extended a number of times to include further sample types, including tissue and blood, and the automation of the sample preparation stage of the testing. CIS continues to look for innovative ways to improve and develop the department by using the best tests available. While the list of tests currently available from CIS is extensive from butterfat, protein, SCCs, antibiotics, Johne’s, BVD and pregnancy to name a few, there are a number of exciting projects underway to improve the service offered and allow the lab to further extend its scope of testing for the analysis of fatty acids and Ketosis on routine milk samples. On the animal health side CIS is working closely with the University of Liverpool on liver fluke. CIS is also looking into the analysis of Mycoplasma bovis and further disease analysis using blood samples all of which will give customers greater information regarding their herd.
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