大象传媒

Wildlife police officers are sometimes choosing not to investigate suspected bird of prey crimes because of a fear of complaints and online abuse. That's according to Chief Inspector Kevin Kell, head of the UK's National Wildlife Crime Unit. The issue of tackling crimes against birds of prey can get tied up with the debate around legal game shooting, and Chief Inspector Kelly says the animosity surrounding the debate, puts some officers off getting involved.

All week we're taking stock of avian flu. Since 2021 the disease has hit wild and farmed birds very hard and it's still at large. The situation so far this year is better than last year, and research carried out by a consortium of British universities and the Animal and Plant Health Agency under the FluMap Project, revealed that the virus doesn't spread between poultry farms in the air, and that spread from farm to farm has been very rare. We ask Professor Ian Brown, Scientific Services Director at the APHA, what the group is looking at next.

Scientists are developing peas which will be at least ten times higher in iron, so vegetarian and vegan consumers can increase the iron in their diets, without eating meat.
The research was started more than 30 years ago, but with the sequencing of the pea genome in 2019 and the arrival of gene editing, scientists at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have been able to find out how to make peas more iron-rich without damaging the plant itself.

Presented by Anna Hill and produced by Beatrice Fenton.