AQUATIZE®
Keeping Water Free of Pathogens

It has always been a challenge for animal growers to eliminate problems in animal drinking water while not hurting the bottom line. Aquatize®, a novel water disinfectant product, may lower waterborne pathogen levels and help reverse recent negative reports on meat contamination.

Despite industry improvements in controlling contamination in chicken, a recent Consumer Reports article (Jan. 2007, page 20) found that levels of Salmonella and Campylobacter have actually increased since 2003. Meanwhile, the USDA and FDA may be considering requiring companies to achieve near impossible standards of cleanliness in finished meat products.  On top of this, consumer confidence in food safety is at an all time low. Therefore, controlling bacterial contamination throughout the production process is crucial, including more emphasis on quality animal drinking water.

Clean drinking water is the most ‘fundamental nutrient’ but often the most neglected.

To reduce costs, many producers may be utilizing inefficient substances to avoid contamination by waterborne pathogenic microorganisms. Water is an excellent source for disease transmission, especially in poultry and swine. Although consumer and government regulatory attention tends to focus on E. coli and Salmonella, a wide range of disease-causing pathogens are transmitted through drinking water. And in areas where many animal producers use the same water supply, the consequences of water contamination can be downright disastrous.

Typically, livestock producers use acidifiers, chlorine (bleach), chlorine dioxide or hydrogen peroxide to combat pathogens in water along with other harsher chemical methods to combat biofilm buildups in water lines. However, each of these methods has inherent problems in effectiveness. Chlorine bleach and chlorine dioxide are the most commonly used water disinfectants, and although they are inexpensive, in order to effectively kill pathogens in contaminated water, the concentration of each of these disinfecting agents must be raised to a point where the disinfectant may actually interfere with performance of the animals or the animal may die if the concentrations are too high. Chlorine dioxide is an efficient disinfectant, but also dangerous to handle and producers risk workers’ safety by using it in farm situations.

The need for a stabilized, non-toxic water disinfectant is essential.

Aquatize® is the result of more than a decade of R&D which has produced unique combinations of two oxyhalogens, sodium chlorite, sodium chlorate, plus several other substances that act as stabilizers (1). Several scientific studies have indicated that Aquatize® is an effective and powerful disinfectant for use against waterborne pathogens (2-6). The product can be stored for years without loss of activity, and when added to the animal drinking water, it kills a wide spectrum of bacterial pathogens, even at very low concentrations. Aquatize® does not appear to pose any threat to the environment, to farm workers or the animals that consume it. In addition, regular use of AQ in the water lines prevents the build-up of biofilm and will actually dislodge existing biofilm after treated water passes through the lines; the time frame for dislodging was three to four weeks at pig farms.

Neither of the oxyhalogens are very concentrated in Aquatize® and when used at the recommended dilutions, it is quite safe, which is why the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has granted approval for its use in animal drinking water (1). Although there is a low concentration of sodium chlorate in Aquatize®, its presence may be a major reason why Aquatize® outperforms other products in its class, as research at Texas A&M University has shown (7, 8).

The US EPA has approved the use of AQUATIZE® against the eleven microbial pathogens listed below.

In the EPA test Aquatize® killed 99.999% of these microbes at dilutions of 1:2000 or 1:5000 and at exposure times ranging from 5 to 10 minutes -- an impressive accomplishment.

Campylobacter jejuni Enterococcus faecalis Escherichia coli
Escherichia coli 0157:H7 Listeria monocytogenes Pasturella multocida
Pseudomonas aeruginosa Salmonella enteritidis     Salmonella typhimurium
Shigella dysenteriae Streptococcus suis  

An on-farm test of Aquatize® in swine reduced E.coli in the drinking water from 43 CFU/100ml to less than 3CFU/100ml and reduced total coliform bacteria from 460 CFU/100ml to less than 3CFU/100ml. Therefore, Aquatize® considerably reduced the amount of diarrhea.

An independent study compared commercial sodium chlorite to Aquatize® and found that both were effective in killing bacteria like E. coli, but Aquatize® was 42 times more effective than industrial-strength sodium chlorite. This indicates that either the combination of all the oxidizing agents in Aquatize® --- or perhaps chlorate alone --- is responsible for the selective disinfectant effects. Below are the results from the study at PARC Institute (PI was Dr. J. McNaughton) comparing Aquatize® and commercial sodium chlorite against a field-isolated, pathogenic E. coli:

Dilution of product tested Aquatize® Sodium Chlorite, 31%
1:50 0 CFU of E. coli survived 0 CFU of E. coli survived
1:100 0 50 CFU survived
1:500 0 2,000 CFU
1:1000 0 @ 10,000 CFU
1:2000 0 > 100,000 CFU
1:3500 300, CFU survived > 100,000 CFU
1:5000 @10,000 CFU survived > 100,000 CFU

Most intestinal pathogens are able to out-grow lactic acid and other gastro-intestinal tract (GIT) bacteria (“good bacteria”) in the oxygen-limited GIT.

This occurs because most pathogens are more efficient at obtaining energy from the substances present in the GIT than the good bacteria. This characteristic is partially responsible for allowing pathogens to displace beneficial microbes in the GIT and eventually leads to sickness or death in animals.  Anecodotal information from field work indicates that one can feed lactic acid bacteria at the same time that Aquatize® is added to the drinking water without killing the lactic acid bacteria.  If correct, this observation leads credibility to the hypothesis that Aquatize® doesn’t kill lactic acid bacteria (7,8).

To survive in very low oxygen environments, many microbes, especially many pathogens, use an enzyme system called nitrate reductase to reduce nitrate to nitrite and eventually to gaseous nitrogen (9). Scientists have overwhelming evidence that chlorate is very similar to nitrate and the nitrate reductase enzyme system mistakingly binds and processes the chlorate. Instead of depositing nitrite, the nitrate reductase enzyme mistakenly reduces chlorate to chlorite -- a much stronger oxidizing agent than nitrite – that oxidizes the cellular machinery until finally the pathogen dies. 

Most of the good bacteria in the GIT, especially those that are lactic acid producers, do not have the nitrate reductase enzyme and therefore do not accidentally reduce the chlorate to chlorite and are unaffected by the presence of chlorate. Animal cells also do not possess nitrate reductase enzyme systems, and are not impacted by the chlorate to chlorite chemical reaction.

This may be a major reason why Aquatize®’s unique formulation containing the powerful oxidizing agent, chlorate, kills pathogens while not harming mucosal cells and beneficial bacteria in the gastro-intestinal tract of animals. 

Chlorite also potentially contributes to the potency of Aquatize®. Chlorite may be converted chemically into chlorine dioxide, a well-known, broad-spectrum disinfectant. As Aquatize®  passes into the acid environment of the stomach (pH 2.0 to 3.0) enough chlorine dioxide is formed from chlorite to kill pathogens; however, the killing mechanism is uncertain. Scientists are unsure whether chlorine dioxide kills pathogens by oxidizing fatty acids and proteins in their outer membranes, by oxidizing essential amino acids cysteine, tryptophan and tyrosine, by oxidizing their nucleic acids, or whether all of these reactions contribute to pathogen inactivation.

Regardless of which mechanism is operative, all microbial cells living in the GIT have proteins and fats in their outer membranes, contain exposed reactive amino acids, and all possess nucleic acids that are sensitive to chlorine dioxide. Thus, the chlorine dioxide generated from the chlorite in Aquatize® would not likely spare obligate anaerobes such as the lactic acid-forming and other normal resident microbes or mucosal cells of the GIT. While chlorine dioxide could be generated in the stomach of the animal, its  nonspecific activity makes it an unlikely candidate  for explaining the disinfection activity of Aquatize®.

Whether or not it is possible to pinpoint the disinfection mechanism of Aquatize® may not be as important as what it does in scientific trials and in the field.  Below is a recent pen trial study that measured mortality and weight gain with Aquatize® vs. chlorine bleach in infected and uninfected pigs. This was a highly replicated study conducted by the PARC Institute’s Dr. James McNaughton.  Each 6 kg pig was infected with 1 MM E. coli and 20,000 salmonella. Treatment groups:

Animal drinking water pathogen destruction chart

The untreated and infected Control group (T1) suffered major mortality (@ 15%) and exhibited a net weight gain of only 13 kg during the 5-week test period.  And remarkably, infected piglets receiving chlorine bleach in their drinking water (T6) suffered almost as much as the pigs in T1 that were not exposed to any disinfectant. Piglets in the uninfected Control group (T2) exhibited the best livability (< 2% mortality) and had the best net weight gain of any of the six groups.  However,  the T5 test group gained almost as much weight as the T2 group, but they suffered more mortality (>4.5%). All the test groups that received Aquatize® in their drinking water (T3 to T5) had excellent weight gain and showed a major improvement in livability. Feed conversions showed a similar pattern to the net weight gain and mortality data and because there were a large number of replications, many of the numerical differences were also statistically significantly different at p <0.05.  Data from this test and from other tests in poultry is available by contacting the authors.

References

1. US Patents # 4,880,638; 5,830,511; and 6,004,587, relevant US patent numbers. 

Aquatize®  (an oxy-halogen) exhibits superior stability and biocidal effects, as compared to chlorine and chlorine dioxide.  Aquatize® is approved for use as a water sanitizer, using data conducted under GLP (EPA GLP Standards 40 CFR, Part 160).

2. Poultry Science 72:259-266, 1993.

Pardue and Jones inoculated 3-d-old broiler chicks with S. typhimurium and administrated Aquatize® ad libitum via drinking water.   At 14 days age the results were:

    • Fecal counts of S. typhimurium were reduced,
    • Nitrogen retention was increased, and
    • Body weight and feed conversion were improved.

3. Avian Diseases 42:140-145, 1998.

Pardue and Lugenbuhl infected turkeys with Bordetella avium and gave Aquatize® in the water and found the following results:

    • Damage to the tracheal epithelium was eliminated,
    • Symptoms associated with bordetellosis in young turkeys were ameliorated,
    • Re-isolation of B. avium was reduced by 90%, and
    • Body weights were significantly improved.

4. Poultry Sci. 79 Supplement 1: 123-124, 2000) and US Patent 5,830,511.

Qureshi et al. found that Aquatize® increased macrophage sensitivity to inflammatory stimuli and enhanced the first line of immunological defense in poultry.

5. Poultry Science: 79, Supp. 1, page 123.

McNaughton and Haschen found that both Aquatize® and feed medication (bacitracin 55 ppm) ameliorated the effect of Clostridium perfringens in broiler chickens reared to 21 days of age.  Fecal bacteria count prior to processing were reduced substantially with Aquatize® (1:2000 dilution) and Clorox (4+ppm), but water consumption was reduced by at least 35% with 4+ppm Cl2 from Clorox.

6. Poultry Science: 80, Supp. 1, accepted for publication.

McNaughton and Roberts found that Aquatize® and medication (bacitracin administered +/- anticoccidials) reduced necrotic enteritis due to C. perfringens in broiler chickens at 21 days of age.  Additional improvement was observed with either salinomycin at 66 ppm or COCCIVAC®-B (anticoccidials used in study) administration.   Either salinomycin at 66 ppm in the feed or COCCIVAC®-B appeared to yield about equal live performances.

7. www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/mar01/sodium0301.html

8. Anderson, R.C. etal., 2001, J. Food Prot. 64: 255-258. 

Effect of Sodium Chlorate on Salmonella typhimurium Concentrations in the Weaned Pig Gut.  And McReynolds, J.L. etal. 2004. Poultry Sci. 83(11): 1857-60. Utilization of the nitrate reductase enzymatic pathway to reduce enteric pathogens in chickens.

9. Potter, L. etal. Int. J. Food Microbiol., 2000, 55(1-3): 1-8. 

Survival of Bacteria During Oxygen Limitation