A wide range of special stains are available. Whole herds are often tested for Brucella, for example, for regulatory purposes. This laboratory sees a high volume of cases and test for any toxins that are present in anything from feed samples to tissue samples. Much highly specialized and technical equipment is used such as the mass spectrophotometer to enable the high accuracy and quality of the results obtained. This laboratory isolates and identifies viruses from samples to search for viral causes of disease.
Techniques used include fluorescent antibody testing, viral isolation, and electron microscopy.