Farming Today

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Farming Today: 12/09/23 Bird flu and game; Dolly the sheep creator dies; giving away apple crop; Colorado potato beetle.

12/09/23 Bird flu and game; Dolly the sheep creator dies; giving away apple crop; Colorado potato beetle.

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, 12/09/23 Bird flu and game; Dolly the sheep creator dies; giving away apple crop; Colorado potato beetle.

Bird flu and game; Dolly the sheep scientist dies; farmer gives away crop; Colorado beetle

Two cases of avian influenza on game bird farms. 
Creator of Dolly the sheep dies.
Farmer gives away fruit as costs too much to sell.
Canary Islands bans UK potatoes.

Two cases of avian flu have been confirmed on game farms in Cheshire and Staffordshire, where pheasant and partridge are produced for shooting. Every year more than 40 million partridge and pheasant are released into the wild from game farms, to populate land for shooting. In May the RSPB called for more restrictions on releasing game birds into the countryside, to reduce the risk of new strains of avian flu, but the British Association for Shooting and Conservation says a ban on releases of game birds is not the answer.

Sir Ian Wilmut who led the research team that produced Dolly the cloned sheep at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, has died at the age of 79. The  team used a cell from the mammary gland of a dead adult sheep to create a living animal that was genetically identical to the donor. The work laid the foundations for stem cell research, a technology which aims to cure many of the diseases of ageing by enabling the body to regenerate damaged tissue.

All week we're picking out the stories from top-fruit farming - that's apples, pears, plums and cherries. One fruit grower in Kent says he is giving away all his crop to charity, because he says he can’t make any money selling it. 

The Canary Islands have banned imports of UK seed and eating potatoes to their Islands after Colorado beetles were found in potatoes in Kent and Hampshire in July. Each year, the UK exports 50 thousand tonnes of potatoes to Spain, and the Canary Islands are the fourth largest export market for seed potatoes from Scotland. The government's Animal and Plant Health Agency says the Spanish National Plant Protection Organisation has agreed to import potatoes again under new criteria and the APHA is discussing this with the sector.

Presenter = Anna Hill
Producer = Rebecca Rooney

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12/09/23 Bird flu and game; Dolly the sheep creator dies; giving away apple crop; Colorado potato beetle.

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