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Industry Spotlight: Antech Diagnostics
It’s amazing what goes on in DeSoto County that most people don’t know about. On any given day, green monkey blood from St. Kitts arrives at a company called Antech Diagnostics, located in Southaven, for analysis by highly trained veterinary technicians.
Antech, a subsidiary of VCA Antech headquartered in Irvine, Calif., has been quietly processing thousands of veterinary lab tests each day in its Southaven facility for the past eight years. The company processes approximately 4000 specimens daily from every type of animal – herd animals, companion animals, avian, and exotic animals including green monkeys and Orlando’s Nellie and Lillie, the oldest dolphins in captivity. VCA Antech, the largest provider of veterinary services in the world, has a network of 333 veterinary hospitals and clinics, with 33 Antech labs, including the Southaven location. The company employs 80 veterinarians nationwide for consultations, with specialties ranging from animal behavior to oncology. VCA Antech is publicly traded as “Woof” on NASDAQ.
Annual growth of twenty-five percent forced the Southaven facility to move in July 2006 to a building located on Globe Cove just off Stateline Road. The $30 million facility is a state-of-the-art facility and is the third-largest full-service lab in the company. The facility is known as Test Express because of its unique relationship with FedEx. Antech employees from Southaven are actually authorized to go to the FedEx hub and take specimen packages from the conveyor and deliver them to the facility because of their time-sensitive nature. Of the 105 employees at the Southaven lab, 80 percent work a shift from midnight to 8 a. m. processing specimens.
Roy Trucks, regional manager for Antech, is proud of the Southaven facility. Trucks has worked in the human laboratory industry for 30 years, and feels that Antech gives as much attention to detail and has the same type of equipment used in human medical labs. Trucks said that animals are as important to Antech as they are to their human owners, and the company is committed to providing the most advanced, state-of-the-art care it can give these animals in its testing processes. Antech technicians are all trained in the veterinary field, then given additional training at Antech to be certified in the specialized work they do. Each animal species has different blood and tissue makeups, and technicians must be able to understand these differences. The lab accepts specimens from veterinarians of all types, ranging from rural vets who don’t have courier service to nearby labs, to zoos, aquariums, and the military. A technician must be prepared to deal with blood or other body fluids from horses to cats to birds to sea turtles to rats. The lab works 
with research facilities in addition to veterinarians, helping pharmaceutical companies with their testing of lab animals.
Trucks said that Antech made the decision to stay in DeSoto County when it needed to expand due to the proximity to FedEx and also because of the ease of doing business in DeSoto County. 49 of the 105 lab employees are DeSoto County residents, and all but one of the administrative staff live in DeSoto County as well.
Antech Diagnostics provides one more example of the well-diversified economy DeSoto County has to offer, and it also shows just how highly advanced and exotic some of the operations here are.