Product Testing

Too good to be true

When we first came across Byotrol in 2005 to be perfectly truthful we were quite sceptical about its claims. This was in the early days of the company before the current body of evidence had been put together and it just sounded too good to be true.

Friends & Family

So we started in the time honoured tradition of testing on friends and family, including Stephen Falder's (the inventor of Byotrol) own dog Riejka. She was Riejka by name and reeker by nature and was the perfect subject.

Wickham Laboratories

These trials all went well, so with the help of Dr Iain B Glen BVMS, PhD, FRCA (by Election), DVA, MRCVS www.glenpharma.com we commissioned two studies with Wickham Laboratories, where we tested the original of Byotrol to European Standards EN 1676 and EN 1677 against a veterinarian cocktail of fungi and bacteria respectively. These tests allowed us to determine how much Byotrol we needed to put in our products to make them effective.

Veterinarian Study

After an initial pilot study with Holly House Veterinarian practice in Knutsford, we recruited a further 8 vets from across the country through a small article in the Veterinary Times. These vets then supervised the trials of 106 smelly hounds from a variety of different habitats: from the gilded pavements of South Kensington in London to beach-walkers in Jersey.

• Broom Cottage Vet. Surgery, Wilmslow
• Dundas Vet. Group, Edinburgh
• Hird & Partners, Ripponden
• Holly House Vet. Surgery, Knutsford
• Kynance Vet. Clinic, South Kensington
• New Era Vet. Hospital, Jersey
• Pengelly & Mizen Vet. Practice, Peterborough
• St. George's Vet. Group, Wolverhampton
• Vet Care Limited, Sale

Trial Results

The results of these trials were truly amazing, particularly if you consider that we were using scent-free versions of the products, so there were no perfumes masking any pongs. Every single dog in the trial improved. We had a 100% success rate!

Every owner had to keep a 3 week odour diary of how their pet smelled over the period and how often they applied the product. With the benefit of hindsight the scale we used for the trial was a bit over ambitious. Dogs are never going to smell  “fresh”, we should perhaps have used “natural” as the final state.

However as you can see from the graph, the shampoo always worked straightaway and the spray took 2 to 3 days to make an impact. Now that we have added a perfume to the product, most people find that the spray and the wipes now work straightaway with the perfume masking the odour, while the Byotrol gets on with the serious business of killing the micro-organisms that are really generating the smells.

Safety

The trials not only proved that the products was effective, they also showed that the products are safe. All the animals were inspected by the vets at the beginning and end of the trial and none showed any adverse effects. This has been borne out in the subsequent four years of sales. We have sold over two million Byotrol pet products without any proven adverse reactions.

Products Tested

Byotrol B2B products have been tested externally against a range of bacteria, fungus and viruses, following EN Standards of significance in food, industrial, domestic, and institutional areas (see appendix 1, 2, 3, 4,).

Microbe tested (Test Laboratory)	Byosan (1000ppm actives)	Byocare hand foam (3000ppm actives)
Escherichia coli (Campden BRI & MSL)	>log 5 reduction	>log 5 reduction
E. hirae (Campden BRI & MSL)	>log 5 reduction	>log 5 reduction
Escherichia coli 0157:H7 (Campden BRI)	>log 5 reduction	NT
Escherichia coli K12-NCTC10538 (in-house)	NT	>log 5 reduction
Staphylococcus aureus (Campden BRI & MSL)	>log 5 reduction	>log 5 reduction
Yersinia enterocolitica (Campden BRI)	>log 5 reduction	NT
Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Campden BRI & MSL)	>log 5 reduction	>log 5 reduction
Salmonella typhimurium (Campden BRI & in-house)	>log 5 reduction	>log 5 reduction
Listeria monocytogene (Campden BRI)	>log 5 reduction	NT
Streptococcus pyogenes (in-house)	NT	>log 5 reduction
Staphylococcus epidermidis (in-house)	NT	>log 5 reduction
Corynebacterium jeikeium (in-house)	NT	>log 5 reduction
Clostridium difficile (vegetative cells) (Microbiological Solutions Ltd)	NT	>log 4 reduction
Candida albicans (Campden BRI & in-house)	>log 4.6 reduction	>log 4.8 reduction
Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Campden BRI)	>log 4.6 reduction	NT
Aspergillus niger (Campden BRI)	>log 4.1 reduction	NT
Tricophyton mentagrophyte (Mikrolab)	NT	> log 3.5 reduction
Influensa A virus H1N1 (Mikrolab)	NT	>log 4 reduction
Herpes Simplex virus type 1 (Mikrolab)	NT	>log 4 reduction
Feline calicivirus 24hours residual efficacy (AFBI)	NT	>log 3.5 reduction
EN1500 (hand rub test) (MSL)	NT	PASS