Our 4 top tips for preventing cross-contamination in your vet clinic

In every vet clinic, there are unseen and deadly viruses, fungi and bacteria that are a potential threat to the health of the animals in your care.

Without an effective cleaning and disinfection regime, you could be at risk of spreading disease among your patients.

Here are our top tips for preventing cross-contamination in your vet clinic.

1. Do a quick clean before disinfecting

While you don’t need to do a thorough clean of your hard surfaces before using a disinfectant, we do recommend that you use hot soapy water first to remove grease, food, or dirt. This will ensure that your disinfectant does the best job possible. When it comes to your flooring, a quick sweep with a broom before mopping with disinfectant will ensure any organic matter or dirt is removed.

2. Opt for veterinary disinfectant over regular disinfectant

There are countless disinfection products available to purchase. These include bleach, ammonia, and products based on alcohol, phenols, or aldehydes. But they’re not all created equal when it comes to preventing cross-contamination in a vet clinic.

While many of these “regular” or household products may be effective as a cleaner or disinfectant in some circumstances, some don’t kill tougher viruses such as Parvovirus or Coronavirus. Some are more effective but can actually be quite harmful to both your staff and animals.

That’s why the Safe4 disinfectant cleaner was developed as an alternative to these products. The founders of Safe4 worked for many years to formulate a cost-effective disinfectant cleaner that was completely safe for staff and the animals in their care, but still highly effective against harmful viruses and bacteria.

Safe4’s effectiveness has also been thoroughly tested – and proven – against a range of viruses, bacteria, and fungi, including parvovirus, coronavirus, kennel cough, FIV, E-coli, and MRSA.

3. Dilute your disinfectant correctly

Like any chemical, the dilution of any disinfectant cleaner is an exact science. Dilute it with too much water and you may minimise its effectiveness. Not enough dilution could result in a solution that is too concentrated and may irritate your staff’s skin or throat.

When you purchase Safe4 veterinary disinfectant you are provided with a handy dilution guide that will ensure you achieve the perfect solution for every application in your veterinary clinic. This guide also includes the minimum contact time required after application for the disinfectant to become effective.

Here’s a condensed dilution guide below:

Organisms	Safe4 Dilution	Minimum Contact Time
Viruses (e.g. FIV)	1:100 water	5 minutes
Fungi (e.g. Candida albicans)	1:100 water	15 minutes
Bacteria (e.g. Kennel cough)	1:100 water	30 minutes
Coronavirus	1:50 water	5 minutes
Parvovirus	1:100 water	15 minutes

4. Don’t waste your time rinsing off disinfectant

Some household disinfectants need to be rinsed off after application, which is time that could be much better spent elsewhere in your clinic. A big advantage of Safe4 disinfectant – thanks to its absence of any toxic chemicals – is that both animals and the people who care for them can be exposed to the disinfectant while it is still wet. This is because Safe4 veterinary disinfectant has a neutral pH of approximately 7.6 when diluted and does not require rinsing after application. This saves you valuable time and makes cleaning a much more streamlined process.

Safe4 is also non-corrosive, non-tainting and non-staining and all recommended dilutions, meaning you’re not going to damage your surfaces or flooring like many regular disinfectant products can.

We’re here to help

When it comes to preventing cross-contamination in your vet clinic, the Safe4 team are the experts. If you have any questions about disinfecting your veterinary clinic, call 1300 661 821 or send us an email.