AUSTIN, Texas and SPRINGDALE, Ark. -- Luminex Corp. and Tyson Foods Inc. have reached a collaboration agreement, to create faster, more accurate and cost-effective food safety and animal health tests, the two companies have announced.
Tyson is the world's leading producer and marketer of chicken, beef and pork, while Luminex is the worldwide leader in multiplex solutions -- performing multiple tests on a single sample -- and develops, manufactures and markets innovative biological testing technologies.
Luminex has historically focused on the development of assays -- analytical tests -- for the human health, pharmaceutical and the biomedical research fields; however, company officials believe their processes and technologies could benefit the food safety and animal health industries both domestically and internationally.
"Luminex is pleased to partner with Tyson to develop novel tests that we believe will allow the food industry to screen for pathogens and other microbes more efficiently and accurately," said Patrick J. Balthrop, president and CEO of Luminex. "Our xMAP Technology, enabling multiple tests to be run simultaneously on one sample, has great application in the food safety and animal health arena as it provides a significant level of data quickly and efficiently."
"We're anxious to explore ways to adapt Luminex technology to our business," said Dr. Neal Apple, vice president of the Tyson Food Safety and Laboratory Services Network for Tyson. "We believe it will give us the flexibility to gather more testing data faster and develop and validate rapid testing options not currently available commercially. We see a tremendous benefit to our customers, company and the food industry by applying this next generation technology to positively impact the effectiveness of our routine laboratory testing. This collaboration represents a big step forward for our labs and lines up with our focus on continuous improvement of our ISO (International Organization for Standardization) Quality System."
Tyson and Luminex's first collaboration is the development of an avian flock health monitoring panel. Future research and development projects slated are focused on food safety and quality tests, and additional animal health diagnostic panels leveraging the flexibility and multi-analyte technology capabilities of xMAP technology and current and future Luminex instrument platforms.
Tyson's Food Safety and Laboratory Services Network includes 17 Tyson laboratories across the country. This includes a 25,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art food testing and research laboratory at Tyson World Headquarters in Springdale, Ark., which is dual certified under the ISO quality management system standard ISO 9001:2000 and the ISO/IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) 17025 standard for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories. In addition, seven other Tyson Foods regional and corporate laboratories are certified under the same ISO/IEC 17025 standard.
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