Disinfection and antisepsis around animals can be a complicated process. There are many very different micro-organisms that cause highly contagious diseases, especially when animals are confined together in catteries, kennels, stables or calf sheds.
Diseases can be caused by simple bacteria and also many other types of living creatures such as viruses, fungi and protozoa. The latter have the ability to form spores, when in the non-active state, that are impervious to many antimicrobial agents.
A simple wipe with meths or a wash with antiseptic soap is no longer sufficient as these organisms, particularly spores and viruses, can be particularly difficult to kill.
Principles of disinfection
The difference between antisepsis, disinfection and sterilization is mainly a matter of degree. In short antisepsis applies to controlling micro-organisms on the animal itself while disinfection applies to the environment. Many highly effective disinfectants are too toxic to living tissue to be used on skin.
There are numerous extremely effective disinfectants and sterilizing agents that have been used over the years but their sheer efficiency has led to their disuse. This is because they kill all living matter so are too toxic for people or animals in the environment. A good example is glutaraldehyde that has been used for many years as a hospital disinfectant but is now frowned upon because of toxic reactions in the nursing staff.
So, for the latter part of the 20th century there was a large hunt for an effective killer of microorganisms that is friendly to the user and the environment. For many years the ideal was thought to be impossible, until the development of chemical combination products.
Inside This Issue |
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| Calol Sticks to The Bottle! | 1 |
| 1 | |
| Starter drenches - False economy? | |
| Ouch! Diarrhoea hurts. | 2 |
| 3 | |
| Disinfection of Animal Housing | |
| 4 | |
| Calsafe and Calol Work Together | |
Oxidizing versus non oxidizing disinfectants
The first of the chemical combinations were oxidizing disinfectants, chemicals that released chlorine at the cellular level but not into the general environment. These had an extremely rapid kill against most types of microorganisms and were relatively safe to use.
Unfortunately, to remain stable most of these chemicals had to operate at an extremely acid pH, which did make them pungent on eyes and noses and also very corrosive to metals and plastic surfaces.
In the meantime non-oxidizing disinfectants were developed that had a slower kill rate but were much more economical in that they were friendly to the environment.
Once again it was thought that disinfectants could not be all things to all men and it was recommended to use a non-oxidizing disinfectant for general everyday use and oxidizing disinfectants for blitz conditions in a disease outbreak.
Breakthrough The breakthrough came in the nineties in the UK with the development of a molecule called a halogenated tertiary amine. This conglomeration of big words was really a combination of chemicals that welded together into one molecular structure that had spectacular killing power but retained all the safety features of other non-oxidizing disinfectants.
This breakthrough, by a company called Medichem, led to the development of the Medis range of disinfectants with the principal product being TriGene.
TriGene
TriGene acts by stripping the membrane completely off bacteria or the capsule off viruses. It acts only on the rigid capsules of microorganisms and does not damage the membrane of mammalian cells.
In addition it will not harm the environment or materials such as metals, rubber seals, linoleum, plastic surfaces etc.
TriGene has a very broad spectrum, i.e. it kills all known bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa and spores.
This means total protection from canine distemper and parvovirus in kennels, snuffles and feline enteritis in catteries, respiratory viruses in stables and BVD in cattle.
It has potent activity against ringworm in all species plus the difficult to kill tuberculosis and spores of cryptosporidiosis in calf sheds.
Killing power is extremely rapid with complete sterilization in 10-30 minutes as compared to the 3-6 hours of the former benchmark product, glutaraldehyde.
This is one of the biggest technological breakthroughs of the end of the 20th century, a disinfectant that indeed will rapidly kill all harmful microorganisms while being safe to use around animals and in the environment.
