With a gift of laboratory equipment from Agway Inc. to Cornell and the transfer of technical personnel, the former Agway Technical Center in Ithaca has become the Nutritional and Environmental Analytical Services (NEAS) unit in the College of Veterinary Medicine's Diagnostic Laboratory.
NEAS customers will be farmers and manufacturers of processed foods and animal feeds. The service will test human food products and animal feeds for nutritional content and quality.
"The mission of NEAS is to provide service, research and teaching with an emphasis on a full range of chemical testing for the food and feed industries," said Donald H. Lein, director of the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. "This acquisition allows the diagnostic laboratory to take a multidisciplinary approach to analyzing and resolving nutritional and environmental problems," he said, pointing to the laboratory's current capabilities in the areas of analytical chemistry, toxicology, equine drug testing and microbiology.
Customers may access NEAS by phone at 257-2345; fax at 257-5041; or Internet at http://web.vet.cornell.edu/Public/DL/ .
Among the planned services of NEAS are:
NEAS will continue to operate from the former Agway site on Warren Road. Buildings there are owned by Tompkins County Area Development (TCAD) on land owned by Cornell. Seven Agway employees will become employees of Cornell, and the director of the Agway technical center, Joseph Hillebrandt, will become the director of operations for NEAS.
"The inclusion of Nutritional and Environmental Analytical Services in the diagnostic laboratory's overall mission will create teaching and research opportunities for graduate, undergraduate and resident-training programs for analytical toxicology, nutrition and food microbiology research," Lein said.