Food Safety Monitoring using Animal Cell Based-Analysis

Animal nutrition and husbandry for dairy and meat production continue to be the subject of extensive research, for prevention of animal disease, to increase production, and to improve product quality at source. Feed formulation is becoming automated, programmable and customisable for each producer, a process informed by ex-vivo models of rumen fermentation, but impeded by lack of in vitro models that can predict the effect of novel feed supplements, or their metabolites, on animal metabolism and meat or milk composition, which makes expensive, difficult large-animal trials the only option. The project will build bovine cell cultures that reproduce metabolism and product synthesis in vivo, and with it the means to conduct predictive testing of feed supplements, as well as biosafety testing of adulterants or environmental pollutants.