Once the Poultry Productivity Enhancer reaches the market, its...

Once the Poultry Productivity Enhancer reaches the market, its uptake is likely to be very rapid, according to Dowland. "The poultry industry is probably the most advanced of the intensive animal production industries, and they're always ready to try new any new technology that might increase profit margins."

Avoiding antibiotics

Imugene's product will kill two proverbial birds with one stone: it should fatten profit margins, and make redundant the controversial practice of adding antibiotics to chicken feed formulas to boost productivity.

Research has convincingly linked the indiscriminate use of antibiotics as growth enhancers in intensive livestock production to the emergence of lethal, multi-resistant strains of bacteria in the world's hospitals.

In the case of the poultry industry, it was a major consumer of avoparcin, an antibiotic cousin of vancomycin. Vancomycin-resistant bacteria, carrying an identical cluster of resistance genes to that found in avoparcin-resistant bacteria, now haunt the world's hospitals.

Imugene's Poultry Productivity Enhancer is neither an antibiotic nor a vaccine. It is a genetically modified fowl adenovirus, engineered to express gamma interferon, a potent immune-system booster.

It was developed to protect young chickens against low-level viral and bacterial infections that depress productivity. Dowland likens the young chickens' exposure to these infections to the episodes of infection that sweep through families when young children go to child-minding centres or school for the first time.

"Even with the best animal husbandry practices, these low-level infections are inevitable," he said. "It takes only one or two infected birds among thousands to spread an infection."

By boosting the immune response very early in life, the Poultry Productivity Enhancer reduces low-level infections that impair productivity and slow growth rates. The healthier chickens have improved food conversion rates, and reach marketable weight earlier.