Egg Heater
Problem statement
When a Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) outbreak occurs, there are impacts from farm to table such as asset losses and steep price increases. Commercial layer egg farms are left with an average of 80,000 eggs per day that distributors and many landfills will refuse. Swift disposal is key for containing and ending an outbreak, so rapid viral deactivation via thermal heating of shell eggs is necessary for a successful response to HPAI. The current procedures of composting and landfilling eggs take an extended period of time and a large amount of labor and materials to complete. Documentation of successful deactivation procedures for these current practices is labor intensive, requiring 40 work hours per day to complete. Therefore, we hope to give the USDA a way to rapidly construct a response unit that can successfully validate that the shell egg heating process meets the standards to deactivate the HPAI virus. This will allow farmers to restart production, reducing transportation delays while minimizing the response costs from delays.
Team members
Bryan Kerska – leader
Maggie Meissner – communicator
Erik Pagenkopf – accountant
Andrew Fernandez – admin
Client
Doris Olander
USDA Veterinary Services