Merial
Encyclopedia
Merial is a multinational
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...

 animal health company. It was formed as a joint venture between Merck & Co.
Merck & Co.
Merck & Co., Inc. , also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme or MSD outside the United States and Canada, is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. The Merck headquarters is located in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, an unincorporated area in Readington Township...

 (MSD AgVet) and Sanofi-Aventis
Sanofi-Aventis
Sanofi S.A. is a multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Paris, France, the world's fourth-largest by prescription sales. Sanofi engages in the research and development, manufacturing and marketing of pharmaceutical products for sale principally in the prescription market, but the...

 (Rhône-Mérieux) in 1997. Merial is now the animal health subsidiary of Sanofi-Aventis. Merial is a company leader in innovation, and provides an ample range with products to improve the health, the well-being and the yield of the animal and poultry. Merial produces many products and vaccines to assure the well-being of domestic pets, farm animals and wildlife. Merial has about 5,600 employees and is present in more than 150 countries in the world. Their sales in 2010 were about 2.6 billion US$. Merial's global headquarters is located at Duluth, GA.

Some of Merial's most popular products are Frontline, Heartgard, Ivomec and Previcox.

On March 9, 2010, Sanofi-Aventis announced http://en.sanofi-aventis.com/investors/events/corporate/2010/2010-03-09_merial.asp it had exercised an option to combine Merial with Intervet/Schering Plough, the animal health business of Merck. The new joint venture will be equally owned by Merck and Sanofi-Aventis.

In October 2009, Merial announced it was investing 70 million US$ at its poultry vaccines plant in Nanchang Hi-tech Development Zone, China.

Merck and Sanofi-Aventis announced on March 22, 2011 the mutual termination of their agreement to form a new animal health joint venture.

Merial was investigated in connection with a 2007 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak
2007 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak
An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom was confirmed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs , on 3 August 2007, in the parish of Normandy, Surrey....

, after a strain of foot-and-mouth disease
Foot-and-mouth disease
Foot-and-mouth disease or hoof-and-mouth disease is an infectious and sometimes fatal viral disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals, including domestic and wild bovids...

 alleged to have been sourced from one of their research facilities was found at Pirbright, a farm in Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, in August 2007. The investigators concluded that "release was most likely due to escape of live virus from the drainage system that connects the vaccine production plant to the sodium hydroxide treatment tanks on another part of the Pirbright site."

The two independent inquiries found that Merial complied with all regulations and committed no breaches of biosecurity.

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