University of Delaware Office of Public Relations The Messenger Vol. 5, No. 4/1996 Biotechnology laboratory honors poultry industry pioneer The new, $8 million, state-of-the-art research laboratory at the College of Agricultural Sciences is expected to be completed during the winter of 1997. Now under construction on the University farm in Newark, the new building will be named the Charles C. Allen Jr. Biotechnology Laboratory, in honor of the 1940 alumnus who is a pioneer in the development of the poultry industry in the state and a generous benefactor to the University. Allen, his two brothers, his son Charles C. (Chick) Allen III, Delaware '71, and two nephews operate three agricultural businesses with a combined total of 2,300 employees. These businesses include Allen's Hatchery Inc., Allen Milling Co., which manufactures poultry feed, and Allen Family Foods, which processes and transports chickens to market. Allen, who recalls his mother's first incubator hatching 250 chicks in 1919, now is part of a family concern that produces 2.2 million to 2.5 million birds a week. An active supporter of the University, Allen has provided $1 million over the next several years for the new laboratory. He also established in 1994 a Life Income Trust that will result in agricultural scholarships for undergraduate students after his death. The Charles C. Allen Jr. Biotechnology Laboratory is located east of Townsend Hall, with the entrance facing the Fischer Greenhouse Laboratory. The 16,635-square-foot building will contain the first two biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) laboratories on campus, allowing for research on infectious poultry viruses. Major research at the center will be on poultry diseases that affect the Delmarva Peninsula's billion-dollar poultry industry. Emergency diagnostic efforts on poultry samples from the field can be accommodated in a special necropsy room. Researchers from across campus will be encouraged to use the facility, as well, especially under the University's recently funded gene sequencing initiative dedicated to agriculturally important plants, animals and organisms.