Prevail is a revolutionary disinfectant and cleaner that is quickly becoming the go-to product in the world of Animal Health in Canada and the United States. The manufacturer, Virox Technologies Inc., is a Canadian company in Oakville, Ontario.

The company bases the revolution product its patented Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide or AHP technology and makes it exclusively for Canada.

However, Virox also manufactures Intervention sold exclusively for the US Farm Animal Health market.

As so often happens Virox Technologies initially developed the product for the world of human health and eventually made its way to the world of animal health due to the benefits it provides.

An Alberta hog producer said they first used Prevail to disinfect and to clean because it works so well for both upon the advice of their veterinarian. Finding it a little pricey, they switched to a cheaper product.

“But then we noticed our trailer wasn’t staying clean inside and out, a yellow film started to develop, and we switched right back to Prevail,” he said. “It doesn’t only disinfect, it also cleans the trailer, and it keeps it clean because it’s a peroxide-based product.”

Chris Vanderkooy, VP agricultural sales Ogena Solutions said Prevail is a relatively new and innovative cleaner, disinfectant, deodorizer available to farmers in North America.

“It was born into human health, and all of the same benefits that make it popular in human health also make it popular on the farm,” said Vanderkooy. “It has a light environmental footprint and is a heavy worker.

What makes it popular with farmers is they can clean and disinfect with one product by merely strengthening the concentration to disinfect. They can use one pail instead of having to have two containers to do their clean and disinfect.

Vanderkooy said the most ground-breaking data as it relates to hog production is the study by the Iowa State University that proves it effectively can kill the PED virus and not only kills the PED virus, but it can do it in the presence of organic material.

“A farm is not like an operating room in a hospital. It is hard to get a barn 100 per cent clean,” he said. “It’s hard to get rid of all the organic material. And so knowing what we learned from the researchers at ISU, we can use it in a hog barn environment which has a pretty heavy organic load at the end of a cycle in a farrowing room with a lot of blood and manure all over the place.”

He said their hog farmer customers have fallen in love with the product because it’s quick, which means they can do their job faster. They don’t have to leave it on the wall for as much dwell time. It’s easy on the farmer and their workers, insofar as they don’t need to wear personal protective equipment. They don’t have to wear breathing masks or anything like that. And it does an outstanding job, so it makes the farrowing room look cleaner.

“It gives them confidence that they’ve killed any nasty bugs like PED, or PRRS, or Seneca Virus. And believe it or not, and it doesn’t matter to a lot of hog farmers, but the fact that it deodorizes the room as well is a bonus,” said Vanderkooy.

Nicole Kenny VP technology platform marketing at Virox Technologies said the company started back in 1998 in Canada with a focus to make a difference for any market that requires the use of disinfectants.

“We’ve made ourselves a leader in the development of next-generation disinfectants, all based on hydrogen peroxide. Our patented technology is called accelerated hydrogen peroxide, or we generally refer to it as AHP,” said Kenny. “We looked at what the problems with using disinfectants are in any market, not just for the human, or the animal, or the facility, but also the environment.”

She said accelerated hydrogen peroxide has a shallow footprint and breaks down into water and oxygen, which doesn’t leave any concerns from a chemical residue within the environment. The Prevail product itself is registered in Canada as a certified green disinfectant cleaner under the EcoLogo Program.

“The technology is to help solve the problems of outbreaks which are a threat to the animals that we’re looking after and an economic threat, obviously, to the producer,” Kenny said.

She said they want to not only stop an outbreak after the fact but by the farmer using it daily, help limit outbreaks from happening by reducing the number of pathogens in the environment so they can’t transmit to the hogs or the sows they’re looking after. •

— By Harry Siemens