Dr. Roberto Soares, Global Marketing Manager at Ceva for the Coccidiosis portfolio of vaccines, spoke to The Poultry Site’s Sarah Mikesell at IPPE in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

“Coccidiosis is one of the most important diseases for poultry,” said Dr. Soares. “It's caused by Eimeria, a parasite, which infects the intestinal tract of birds.”

Coccidiosis causes delays in growth, impacts feed conversion rate and uniformity. It also can increase mortality causing significant losses for the poultry producers and to the industry.

Solution to coccidiosis

“The solution, until now, has been to rely on using anticoccidial drugs,” said Dr. Soares. “Companies have been using different types of drugs and programs for many years to overcome the resistance issues.”

Another problem with the continued use of antibiotics to prevent coccidiosis is the demand from customers to reduce antibiotic usage in broiler production. In the last few years, the production of birds raised without antibiotics has grown significantly to meet this demand. Dr. Soares mentioned that anticoccidial vaccines became an excellent natural alternative for anticoccidials to prevent resistance development.

“Ceva has developed a unique anticoccidial vaccine range and remains committed to developing solutions to help the industry raise birds without antibiotics and better manage anticoccidial resistance issues.”

New research and development facility

“Ceva is opening a new state-of-the-art plant in Guelph, Ontario, Canada,” said Dr. Soares. “This new anticoccidial vaccine plant will expand our production capacity in response to the rising market demand for RWA products and reduce the risks of supply."

Ceva’s new GMP plant will be able to supply anticoccidial vaccines from Canada to the whole world.