$15M funding for new food safety and cattle vaccine facility

Belleville, ON – Bioniche Life Sciences’ new $25-million animal health and food safety vaccine production facility in Belleville, ON, is receiving $10 in funding from Ontario’s provincial government and $5 million in funding from the federal government.

The new facility will produce a new world-class vaccine for cattle. It will use a new technology to produce a vaccine designed to significantly reduce the levels of Escherichia coli (E coli) O157:H7 bacteria in cattle and their manure. This vaccine will help reduce potential contamination of E coli in the environment, ground water, and cattle processing plants.

Graeme McRae, CEO of Bioniche Life Sciences, says a number of “firsts” are associated with the project. “The E coli O157:H7 vaccine is the first of its kind anywhere in the world; the vaccine is the first of its kind to be recognized globally as the best new veterinary product for livestock; and the Animal Health and Food Safety Vaccine Manufacturing Centre at Bioniche will be the first of its kind in Canada,” he says.

Following completion of the project (phase one of a larger scale-up), he says the production facility will have an annual capacity of 40 million doses of vaccine within 24 months. The Belleville facility will create 73 new highly skilled jobs in the region. In addition, further jobs will be created in future phases of scale-up, up to an estimated 135 new jobs in total. These are over and above the 100 jobs currently at the facility.