➡️STERILISATION: A process designed to kill all types of organisms with a probability that only one organism will remain from a starting count of 1,000,000,000. A process which kills all organisms present, including spores. Sterilization can only be reliably or repeatedly guaranteed using extreme physical/ chemical methods, e.g. placing instruments in an effective autoclave and subjecting them to high temperatures and steam pressures for extended time.

➡️Disinfection: A process that eliminates many or all pathogenic microorganisms, except bacterial spores, on inanimate objects.

➡️Decontamination: Decontamination renders an item or material safe to handle. It is a general term that includes cleaning, disinfection, and sterilization. They are key components of routine biosecurity in poultry farming aiming at disease prevention or spread reduction, killing any disease organisms like virus, bacteria, parasite, mold that might be present on a farm at the end of a production cycle or after disease outbreak allowing safe re-population of a farm.

➡️BIOCIDE: The general terms “biocide”, “germicide”, or “microbicide” refer to a substance or product that destroys or inhibits the growth or activity of living organisms. This includes disinfectants, sanitizers, antiseptics, and sterilant.

These antimicrobial products vary in their ability to destroy microorganisms.

The suffix –cide or -cidal (e.g., bactericide, virucidal, fungicide, sporicidal, tuberculocidal) reflects a killing action on a particular microorganism class.

 The suffix –static (e.g., bacteriostatic, virostatic, sporostatic) is used if the product only inhibits the growth or replication of the organism.

➡️Cleaning: involves the physical removal of visible contamination from surfaces. Soaps and detergents bind to oils, soil and organic material so it can be rinsed away. Some cleaners can disrupt the lipid components (e.g., cell membrane or viral envelope) of certain pathogens. Physical action with detergent gives the removal of organic material and 99- 99.9% of organisms present.