With lambing and spring calving now in full swing, the AG Show team checks in with a vet to get the lowdown on what the Bluetongue virus could mean for the newest arrivals in your flock or herd.

We also dig into how the conflict in the Middle East might shake up nitrogen supplies and impact other farm costs.

And with shoppers feeling the pinch from rising food prices, we hear about a new study looking into what really influences their choices when they’re picking up red meat in-store.

SOME USEFUL BITS (FROM AHDB & BEYOND)

Bluetongue Virus Hub - Ruminant Health & Welfare

BTV-3_Factsheet_A4_260224.indd

Bluetongue virus webinars | AHDB

Middle East escalation and potential implications for nitrogen and farm costs | AHDB

Consumer insights: Meat shopper journey | AHDB

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How do you drink your martinis, Martin?

Quickly and in quantity. How about you?

I don't know cause I tried one the once and it was disgusting and then I realized that basically it was just straight gin, isn't it? And then I hadn't made it into a dirty martini so I've then seen all over TikTok you can do. It's basically like a salad dressing.

So you have olive brin in and hopefully it's blue cheese olives that you'd be in there and then you would put in a bit of gherkin juice, a bit of pickled onion juice, a little bit of olive oil and cracked black pepper. So I think that is gonna be my drink of choice this weekend when I'm away with my mum and she can pay for em, so it'll be even better indeed.

Is it a James Bond themed party or something else?

It's a very, very nice art deco hotel just off the coast of Devon. So I will be in, not that you see me in anything other than probably jumpers or workwear, but I will be in evening gown.

So I'll scrub up well hopefully.

Hi, I'm producer Martin.

I'm Charlotte Forkes-Rees and welcome to The AG Show.

Lots to cram into this week's episode as we're joined by Yvette to explain how the blue tongue virus can affect calving and lambing.

These are dummy animals, so they basically present with brain malformations which present like weakness or unable to stand up.

Maybe they won't have a suck reflex, they may be blind, they may do something called stargazing, which is basically lifting their head up and looking up at the sky.

We'll take you through a meat shopper's journey, looking at what drives decisions and at what point these can be influenced.

They told us price was very important, you know, which, as you'd expect nowadays meat is a higher value item in the shopping basket. But also quality came out as very high, much higher than we saw last time.

Plus we'll look at potential implications for your farming business in light of events in the Middle East.

A reminder, new episodes of the Ag show drop every Wednesday at midday. Available wherever you get your podcasts, with

not just audio but video versions for every show. Just subscribe to make sure you don't

miss an episode and do get in touch. We do love hearing from you.

Comment on any of our social posts or email agshowdb.org UK Bit of a busy one this week, Martin, so I think we should get straight into Things as we kick off with a look at lambing and calving.

That's it. We're in spring, so you don't need me to remind you that there's lots of activity going on across the UK at the moment.

But we did want to flag the adverse effects of the blue tongue virus and what to look out for.

I recently caught up with vet Amy Soren and HDB's Animal Health and welfare scientist Zoe Lloyd. And I began by asking Amy how the virus can impact reproduction.

So the ways in which that blue tongue can affect reproduction.

Obviously, if an animal is infected at a very specific point within the pregnancy, sometimes the fever that they get could impact their fertility to a point at which they don't even get pregnant in the first place. And obviously we can't discount talking about breeding males here as well.

So if they have a transient fever or they're stressed for whatever reason, their semen production may not be optimal. So they might not be completely useless, but you may see drop in their potential.

The biggest thing that we see around this time of year, and that many of my colleagues are seeing across the country, is the animals have been able to continue a pregnancy two term, but then the offspring are affected in some way.

I guess some of the impacts are going to be depending on what point the animal may have been, you know, affected. So what would be some of those, really key watch outs to look for?

What we're seeing is what we're calling dummy calves. And obviously you can translate this over to lambs and any other animal that's sort of susceptible to blue tongue.

But we'll mainly talk about cattle and sheep here. And these are. These are dummy animals. So they basically present with brain malformations which present like weakness or unable to stand up.

Maybe they won't have a suck reflex. They may be blind. They may do something called stargazing, which is basically lifting their head up and looking up at the sky.

They may also be circling very much depends where the lesion in their brain is or indeed if they're born with a full brain, because sometimes that can be quite absent. So any calf or lamb that behaves out of the ordinary should be investigated. And blue tongue's really on the table for those dummy animals.

Of course, if you have like a difficult delivery or an animal's head's been stuck during delivery, you can get sort of a swollen head and they can be a bit slow to suck.

But something that's out the ordinary, that's not explainable by those mechanical forces, we should probably Be having a chat with our vets just to see if blue tongue needs ruling out.

Are they potentially similar clinical signs to other diseases or would it just be. Oh, it would more than likely be blue tongue or there was an issue with actually that delivery.

There's a few other things it could be. And that's why it's really important to have a chat with your vet about your farm's risk profile, what's going on at the time.

Like, we've seen limb deformities and spinal deformities with blue tongue in newborn calves, but equally we see that with Schmellenberg disease. So that's why it's sort of important to run a profile of tests that suits where you are.

So best thing to do is get hold of your vet as soon as you suspect that something's maybe amiss.

Definitely. I mean, you know, a phone conversation is usually free and you can just have a little chat, just log some concerns. Maybe some things are a one off.

But if you start to see a pattern emerging, we really need to get in there. And I think it really is frustrating because the damage is sort of done by that point.

You're just sort of waiting for a crop of calves to arrive, thinking, oh, my goodness, what's going to come at me here?

But knowing what it is means if it's not blue tongue, then we can potentially put different control plans in place, like vaccination for different abortive diseases or, you know, some kind of profiling of your breeding stock. But if we know that it's blue tongue, obviously that is notifiable and we do have to notify the government, notify APHA about that.

Yeah, and I'll make sure that the different numbers are linked in our show notes for anyone that might need to be logging this. But you touched on it there with vaccinations. Can vaccination really help with these potential issues in lambing and calving times?

The key to vaccination being as effective as it can be is to do so early. So we recommend vaccinating before the vector period really kicks in, which is basically when midges are super active.

So that we predict is usually around May time. But it is getting a bit warmer now. Wherever you are, it's certainly getting a bit warmer and sunnier here.

I'm in Essex and with the vaccines, they form a sort of the best line of protection that we have, I suppose, against the clinical signs of blue tongue.

So they won't make an animal specifically immune to it, but they will help them fight the clinical signs, reduce their viremia, which makes them less contagious. The hope is that that would reduce losses in those animals.

That is something that we do need to be aware of because, yes, we are technically, I think in spring now that we are into March, but we didn't have a particularly cold winter, did we? And that is then potentially having that impact that the vectors are just hanging around that bit longer.

Yeah, it did take a bit of time for it to be declared, you know, a low vector period. And we can't discount the possibility of some very fastidious midges hanging around and overwintering.

But now, you know, I've certainly seen midges of an evening just around where I live. So, you know, it won't be long until they are really in full flight.

So it's probably one of those things that if people haven't vaccinated for this breeding season, certainly something for them to be thinking about going ahead.

Yeah, I really think so. I mean, there's a lot of discussion around vaccination and I think there is a lot of frustration that it's, you know, not like fully protective.

But the vaccines that we have against Blue Tongue 3, that they only protect against Blue Tongue 3, I should point out, because I know there's chat about 12 and 8 and they do just reduce the clinical signs of viremia. But I'm saying just. But blue tongue can make animals really, really poorly and we've seen a range of clinical signs associated with it.

You know, animals have been largely unaffected but are testing positive. Some have just died and some have looked really, really poorly. And it's taken quite a long time for them to sort of get back up to health, if at all.

So, you know, it is the best hope that we have. But it has to be a risk based discussion that all farmers have with their vets.

You know, no one's going to force this, but it is worth bearing in mind that a loss from blue tongue could potentially override the expense involved in vaccinating stock.

So, Zoe, as part of our animal health and welfare team, we do have a number of tools, don't we? What do you suggest that people would check out perhaps on our website? Yeah, absolutely.

So we have a number of tools available on the AHDB and Rument health and welfare websites, one of which is the vaccine decision maker tool.

So this was initially developed to spark conversations between farmers and their vets about the farm's risk to Bluetongue and whether vaccination is right for that farm.

So this Tool largely asks questions around sort of where the farm is located and the value of the stock on that farm to help build that picture of risk. And we also do have the three vaccine finance calculators. We have one for beef, one for sheep, one for dairy.

And these calculators have been designed to allow farmers to work out how much it would cost them to vaccinate their stock for blue tongue and then in turn how much vaccinating might save them. These calculators are based on real life scenarios from Europe and the uk.

They calculate the impact of blue tongue infection based off four scenarios ranging from mild to severe infection. And these take in consideration, or they consider sorry losses from fertility issues, production and mortality caused by the virus.

And just going off sort of what Amy was talking about earlier.

We also do have a BTD3 infection in calves fact sheet available on the root health and Welfare website, which details some of those clinical signs that Amy spoke about earlier with the deformed dummy calves.

So really helpful resources that can back up with talking to your vets. So you have some more information for having some of those conversations?

Absolutely. And they're all freely available, so yes, please do check those out.

So if you are listening to the Ag show as soon as it has come out this evening at 5 o', clock, so that's Wednesday 11th March, we have got a webinar that's talking all things blue tongue, so you can get your latest updates there.

If you're catching this after that point, we will have that on catch up and I'll make sure that producer Martin has linked that within our show notes. So, Amy, is there any key point or takeaway that you want to leave us with?

I feel like a lot of us are experiencing a bit of reporting fatigue because it feels like a bit of a blur.

But Blue Tone has been around for a little bit now and because it isn't one of those obvious diseases that causes problems with the food chain, I think we can be a little bit dismissive of it. Obviously, nobody wants any scrutiny on their farms or, you know, to feel like their operations are going to be interrupted by reporting it.

But we do have a legal obligation to still notify about this disease and report it.

The more we know about it, the more we can learn to control it and, you know, future incursions, obviously, God forbid, can be better handled because we are understand what might potentially happen as a result of this incursion. So we are all still responsible.

I know we're very tired of having to make calls about it, but we still really need to understand what is going on in an effort to fight it. And though it does not necessarily affect the food chain per se, it's not a public health issue.

There are production issues going on because there are calf crops being lost. And also it's an animal welfare issue. The animals I've seen with it have been really, really poorly. We need to sort of stop it in its track.

In order to do that, we have to understand it. In order to understand it, we have to report it.

You're listening to the Ag show with Charlotte Fawkes, Rees and me producer Martin, surname Winch. If you ever bothered to want to know that little tidbit of information, I think it's time that we did the news.

And Charlotte, I'm giving it all over to you this week. What are we going to kick off with?

Well, I think it is important that we should be touching on this because I'm sure it hasn't gone unnoticed that tensions in the Middle east have escalated.

And while the UK isn't at time of recording an active part in this conflict, the situation is incredibly fluid and UK agriculture is already feeling the ripple effects.

AHDB's senior economist Jess Corsair has analyzed the developments and her work shows that geopolitical uncertainty is pushing up risk premiums across global gas, oil and freight markets. All three feed directly into farm input costs.

Although the Middle east does feel like a very long way away from the uk, we do rely heavily on the region for fertiliser feedstocks and energy products. There's currently no confirmed disruption to fertiliser supplies entering the uk, but markets are reacting to the possibility of instability.

That's leading to higher risk premiums on natural gas, the key feedstock for nitrogen fertiliser, greater volatility in oil and freight and the potential for tighter margins if these pressures persist. Jess analysis is definitely worth a read.

It is there and on our website and breaking down what's happening, why it matters and how different sectors could be affected. So we're going to link it in our show notes and I would strongly recommend taking a look.

But across all sectors there are a few key watch outs which I think you should be aware of and that's going to be movement in natural gas and oil markets, any freight disruptions or delays and how that could impact on you UK fertiliser price updates heading into spring, because obviously it would happen at a time like this when that is such a key input for our farms. And then currency shifts that affect import and export competitiveness.

So we do know this is a very fast moving situation and it is going to be something that we continue to monitor on these developments very closely. So as soon as we have more updates, we'll make sure that these are shared with you and they will be available on the AHDB website.

That's it. Just keep visiting our website. As you know, any updates, any movement, I'm sure we will reflect on there.

Anything else in the news that you've seen recently?

Yeah, you might have to indulge me on this one slightly because I know we have talked quite a lot about health and the different angles which are resonating with consumers on the show and I do kind of want to stay on that topic a little bit longer, if you don't mind.

Fibre is fast emerging as potentially the next must have nutrient for food and drink brands, driven by growing interest in gut health, digestion and overall wellness.

So we do know that protein is very much a buzzword with consumers, but fibre is increasingly being used as a new health cue and that's really coming through in drinks, snacks and so called funct. The challenge is that despite its growing popularity, actually consumers, they don't really understand what fibre means.

So for some, fibre has become a shorthand for gut health or better for you, even though the science behind it is far more nuanced. And that actually is putting real pressure on brands to strike the right balance between simple, appealing messages and that technical accuracy.

And, and because it is such a complex nutrient to work with, not like protein, you know, it isn't a single uniform ingredient and different fiber types behave very differently, they can give you different benefits and they can be measured in very different ways.

So that is, you know, trying to make a new product that is including certain benefits can be really difficult to make sure that you are able to make certain claims on pack. And this is where my little bit of news comes in.

I've seen recently a US soda brand named Poppy which has launched in the UK and it has had to do so without one of its biggest selling points.

So according to the grocer, Poppy has had to drop any on pack prebiotic claims for its UK range because the drinks don't contain enough fibre to make these threshold claims here, despite it having exactly the same recipe as the US version where these claims are able to be made.

Now I thought that this was really interesting, particularly off the back of talking to Jono last week about the work that HDB does in exports, because you would think that the US and the UK would be very similar markets and you would in theory be able to make very similar claims. But actually seeing something as simple as a soda struggling to carry these health claims, it shows what a challenge it can be.

So making sure that you can deliver what consumers are interested in internationally isn't straightforward. But one thing I do think that we are incredibly proud of at HDB is being known as that source of independent evidence based information.

So if we are making claims about any of the products within our sectors, we know that we can stand behind them, but we just have to be aware about where we are looking at putting these products and making sure that these messages land both legally and credibly with consumers. But I think the most important part of this is. Martin, what's your thought on fiber claiming sodas something you're interested in?

Not massively. I'd probably. Was it poppy they're called? Yeah, I'd be more interested in like a Popeye because I stick spinach in my smoothie every morning.

So yeah, fortified with iron. I'm a creature of habit when it comes to fizzy drinks. It's a Diet Coke for me.

I have to say I was influenced to try one of these poppies. It was tasty enough. I don't think it was worth the £2 for a 330mil can.

Yeah, you lost me at that price point.

So yeah, I'm probably not rushing back. And my soda of choice would be a Dr. Pepper. Zero. Very niche. Probably for some, but that would be my ideal.

I still have never had a can.

No, that can't be right.

Maybe it's just misunderstood.

I'll bring you one in to try, don't you worry.

And on that note, next up we'll be looking at the Meat Shopper journey to understand what drives consumers to purchase the cuts that they do. Thanks for sticking with with the AG Show.

Agshowhdb.org uk is the email address if you want to suggest future topics for Charlotte, maybe Hannah and myself, producer Martin, to discuss on a future show. Hannah, where are you? Come back. Hannah. We'll, we'll see. We'll see if we can get her onto, onto the next week's show. Maybe. Charlotte.

Fingers crossed. I was gonna say I am missing her so she better be here. But let's finish off this episode with a glimpse into the world of consumer insights.

My favourite place to be. So my colleague Vanessa Adamson has been looking at what drives decisions to purchase meat and she explained why we commissioned this research.

We want to track how people decide how they're going to purchase their meat.

So do they decide this at home, do they decide this when they're out and about, or do they actually just turn up in store with or without a shopping list and is it a predetermined decision or not? Is it something they make that decision at the last minute? Obviously we're all different.

So it was good to delve into this, do a really complex research study and find out what consumers were telling us.

I say even me thinking about it, what I was probably going out and doing and buying before COVID is quite different to now. And if you ask my husband how he shops versus how I shop, he's very planned and I like to look at the shelves and put in whatever.

What were some of the key findings that you found from this research project?

Consumer habits seem to differ very much during the week versus weekends. They told us price was very important, you know, which, as you'd expect nowadays, and meat is a higher value item in the shopping basket.

So, yeah, we'd expect that. But also quality cake out as very high, much higher than we saw last time.

And that's about people wanting to get the best quality they can for the right amount of money. So it's not about buying the cheapest, it's about buying what they can afford and getting that right quality.

And then it's also because it is quite an expensive item, it's by meat that all the family will enjoy as well, or maybe more at weekends.

It's something they want to experiment a bit more, maybe treat themselves a bit more, perhaps, like we've seen, you know, less people are going out now for meals cause of the expense.

So it's, you know, I want to treat myself at home, so I'm going to buy that, maybe some lamb or a steak or maybe some premium added value meals, that kind of thing.

Whereas during the week it's more your regular purchases, it's more maybe your mince or your chicken or that kind of thing, which is more versatile and suitable for all the family. Maybe tiers came out as very important.

So in terms of where we see like a premium tier, that extra special premium product on the shelves, but then generally you have more of a standard or you have like an economy.

It was interesting speaking actually going out and speaking to shoppers in store and finding, you know, everyone is very different and what's really important to some is very different to others. And quality is very subjective as well.

I mean you just said that you went out and spoke to people in store. Was that part of the research process? Like what was the project and how did you kind of undertake it to get this data?

Yeah, what was really critically important to this research, I should have said at the beginning was actually there's this say do gap. So when we do a lot of research we want to do a quantitative segment which is basically questionnaire for 2,500 consumers to fill out.

They got great results from that.

But what we wanted to compare that with was with a thousand observing a thousand shoppers in stores across most retailers, doing main shops or top up shops and actually finding out how did those results differ from those thousand. Just over a thousand consumers differ from those at actually we got the questionnaire results from.

And was it quite different?

It was quite different. Whereas from a claimed from a questionnaire results, price came out as most important to consumers.

Actually when we got the results from the in store shoppers, it came out for meat. Appearance was by far, really, really by far the greatest importance to them.

And that's because it gives them by looking at the appearance, that content, the color, they can look at the dates and that really is very important to them.

And they can plan, you know, if they're making a more expensive purchase, for example, stakes, that kind of thing, you know, it's important to them that it looks right. So that came out as far more important than price or other considerations to them, which was very interesting.

And did you also look into at what point people start making decisions about their purchases? So whether that's in home or on their drive in or when they're actually at store. Yeah, yes.

And this was interesting as well because basically it came out about two thirds of everyone we surveyed came out as yet. They either a third basically planned all their meals. Very organized, very structured. That's not me.

Not me either.

Another third basically no, they should plan some meals. It helps them save money. It helps them know that they've got a meal at the table, you know, for their families, for example, during the week.

So a third do that and a third. Yeah, more like us. Charlotte just wing it really. And so that was really interesting. But yeah, some plan.

And that's obviously before they get into store and have a, some have a Strict shopping list. Some have a more flexible list.

And it was generally those like your mince, your chicken, those kind of products maybe that are on their strict shopping list.

But actually they're more swayed to be look in store, happier to look in store for maybe those more premium cuts, things that, you know, might be those weekend or those treaty occasions.

I think it's really interesting because we've had this before where, you know, you would think perhaps with mince and with chicken, actually that would be something that would be more influenced. But because like you said, people like to know that particularly in the week they've got that meal that they can just make.

They don't necessarily have to have decided on that meal, is it. They just know that they've got that protein element for it.

So really interesting that there's such a discrepancy then perhaps where you might be able to sway people into making that purchase.

Yeah, and I think that's really key for the industry for, you know, like retailers and processors.

But, you know, it is key to persuade consumers and give them that inspiration for recipes, food recipes, meat recipes, you know, and it is about health. And it's very much came out here as well that, you know, there is that convenience factor. Consumers want quick, easy meals.

I know we've found that before in different research we've done previously, but you. Yeah, it is about helping them.

So it's helping them at home, give them recipe ideas, whether that's online, you know, through social, but give them those ideas.

And there are easy to cook recipes out there or whether that's, you know, in terms of putting QR codes or recipes leaflets in store, for example, or on packs.

But, you know, explain to consumers how long it'll take to cook this, you know, a couple of easy recipes that they could do for a family or for a couple, for example.

And did we find that for the different proteins? Obviously we've said chicken and mince. This is said beforehand.

But when you're actually at fixture, do people spend a different amount of time when looking at the meat, making that decision when they're in store? Yes.

Yeah, that was, that was interesting because we were observing them, so we timed how long they were taking to pick up their products. Probably, as you'd expect, fat, chicken, mince, more routine. And also I think labeling's improved over the last few years as well.

So, you know, like a lot of mince now gets the percentage fat content on there. So that helps people make their decision easier. It is more those premium, like those lambs, those Added value, meals, steaks, greater expense.

And people want to browse those and take longer to make sure they're getting the best value for their money, basically, and the best. The best product. And if they're not happy with that product on the shelf, they won't buy.

And I think, Vanessa, really importantly, a lot of our listeners might want to know, how did British fare within this research? What were people thinking about. About it?

It was really interesting. It didn't come out as one of the top drivers, like price and quality and appearance, but what it.

What we did see was actually at Fixture, this was far more important to consumers nowadays.

So whereas they claim they claimed it was important, 22% claimed it was really important to them, that that was pretty much the same figure that was at Fixture.

That is great news. Well, thank you so much, Vanessa, for your time. The report is now live on our website.

So if this has whetted your whistle to find out a little bit more about when people are making their decisions for their meatpack purchases, we have loads more information on there. But thank you once again for joining us.

You're welcome. Thank you.

Producer Martin. I am just gonna start calling you. I'm.

Wow.

You're just gonna have to be Martin. Is that what it's going to be?

That is what my daughter sometimes calls me.

What, just Martin?

Yes.

First name.

Just it's Daddy to you, but yeah, no, that's. That's absolutely fine, Martin. I'll go with that. Let's see what the future holds.

As I said, I'm not going to call you Daddy. But on that note,

Producer Daddy. It's got a ring to it.

Daddy. Producer.

So it was like, daddy Pig, who's unlike me, is able to run a marathon later this year? I don't know whether you. Did you see the news? Pepper's dad going to be running the marathon.

Did you just feel like it was rubbing more salt into the wound that, yeah, Hannah has been running, I've been running, Peppa Pig's dad's been running. But I think that's all we've got time for this week. It's been great having you with us and finding out all about what is driving those purchases.

In store and what you could be considering doing to help reduce your blue tongue risk on fire. So if you want to be in touch, the email address is agshowdb.orguk or feel free to contact us on any of our social channels.

We really do love hearing from you and make sure you are subscribed so you know when our next episode lands. And that's every Wednesday at midday and until next Wednesday.

See you later.

See you later. And Hannah, you better be here.