CENTRO DE CALIDAD AVICOLA Y ALIMENTACION ANIMAL DE LA COMUNIDAD VALENCIANA

Their core work

CECAV is a quality and safety center for poultry production and animal feed in the Valencia region of Spain, providing technical expertise on disease control, biosecurity, and feed additives in commercial poultry operations. Their work sits at the intersection of veterinary science and food safety, specifically targeting bacterial pathogens like Salmonella and E. coli that threaten both animal health and human consumers. In EU projects, they contribute hands-on poultry industry knowledge — testing interventions like bacteriophages and feed additives on real farms, and helping translate scientific solutions into compliant, practical protocols. They also engage in sector-wide networking to raise biosecurity standards across European poultry producers.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

CECAV's early H2020 participation (PHAGOVET, 2018) was deeply technical — focused on specific pathogens, laboratory and farm-level interventions, biocides, and antimicrobial resistance. Their second project (NETPOULSAFE, 2020) marks a clear shift toward sector-level coordination: the keywords drop disease-specific terms entirely in favor of "biosecurity compliance" and broad poultry sector engagement. This suggests a deliberate move from technical contributor to industry ambassador — a common trajectory for regional quality centers that accumulate credibility through applied research and then leverage it for sector governance work.

CECAV appears to be positioning itself as a regional hub for biosecurity standards and poultry sector governance, making them a useful partner for projects that need credible industry buy-in from Spanish and southern European poultry producers.

How they like to work

CECAV has participated exclusively as a partner, never as coordinator, across both projects — suggesting they join consortia as a domain-specific contributor rather than driving project leadership. Their average funding per project (€378K) is modest, consistent with a specialized support role rather than a work-package lead. With 19 unique partners across 8 countries from just 2 projects, they appear comfortable operating in mid-to-large international consortia.

CECAV has built connections with 19 distinct partners across 8 countries from only 2 projects, indicating well-networked participation in European poultry and food safety consortia. Their geographic reach extends across Europe, likely including other southern European poultry-intensive countries alongside northern European research institutions.

What sets them apart

CECAV occupies a rare niche as a regional quality assurance body specifically dedicated to poultry and animal feed — not a university, not a large research institute, but an industry-embedded technical center with regulatory and practical credibility. This makes them valuable as a bridge between academic research and actual farm-level implementation, particularly in Spanish and Valencian poultry supply chains. For consortia needing a credible industry validator or dissemination channel into Iberian poultry producers, CECAV fills a role that generalist research partners cannot.

Highlights from their portfolio

• PHAGOVET
  The largest funded project (€653,660) and the most technically rich, targeting Salmonella and E. coli control through bacteriophage and feed additive interventions — directly relevant to both food safety regulation and AMR policy.
• NETPOULSAFE
  A sector-wide CSA project focused on biosecurity compliance networking across European poultry actors, signaling CECAV's evolution into a coordination and standards-promotion role.