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Ep. 15: Julian Sparrey, LiveTec – What Producers Should Expect from AI This Winter
74 Plays23 days ago
The Poultry Network Podcast welcomes Julian “Jules” Sparrey, Group Technical Director at LiveTec, to unpack what producers should expect from avian influenza (AI) this winter and how to harden farm resilience.
LiveTec, prime contractor to government for AI outbreak response, now puts most of its effort into prevention — its “four Ps”: Prevention, Protection, Planning and Prediction.
Having worked on nearly 300 UK outbreaks in the past eight years, the team has learned first-hand what a confirmed case means for farms and businesses, and how to reduce the odds of it happening again.
Jules explains why this past summer raised eyebrows: unusually high numbers of detections despite heat that would typically knock back virus persistence in the environment.
The likely explanation is a maintained pool of virus within wild bird populations.
August also saw outbreaks linked to pheasants in the South West and reports of dead gulls on farms — reminders that under-reporting masks the true extent of viral pressure.
While LiveTec’s broad forecast suggests this season may be “heavy” (roughly two-thirds of the 2022–23 peak), timing and scale still hinge on weather and migration patterns through late October.
Expect a lag: wetter conditions can seed problems that only show several weeks later.
A standout segment covers LiveTec’s work with GPS-tag data from gulls. Though only a snapshot (c. 60–70 birds), it reveals daily UK–Netherlands movements, long ranging during certain months, and roosting behaviour around freshwater — all of which can “move” virus across landscapes.
Jules stresses: it’s less that virus is “blown on the wind” and more that birds travel with it, often following prevailing winds.
On resilience, the message is practical. Beyond “biosecurity fatigue,” focus on infrastructure: drainage and curtilage to prevent water ingress, roof and gutter maintenance, rigorous rodent control (especially during harvest and cultivations), and wild-bird exclusion.
Many UK sheds are ageing; refurbishment is surging, but design choices matter.
Build biosecurity in from the start: site layout, traffic routes, delivery/drop-off points and office access that minimise entries to clean areas.
The same measures help against salmonella — another reason to double down now.
For further reading and tools, the episode points listeners to EFSA’s biosecurity toolkit (multi-language infographics), Poultry.Network’s recent coverage of Gordon Hickman (Defra/APHA) on this winter’s risk, and a previous episode with Wayne Olbison (LANXESS) on the nuts-and-bolts of cleaning and turnaround.
LiveTec's own podcast (hosted by Jack Hughes) dives deeper into biosecurity, and its free mobile app lets users view outbreak and wild-bird data around their farms.
This winter, expect the unexpected, prepare for higher viral pressure than last year, and invest in the simple, site-level fixes that pay off when it counts.
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:16
Tom Woolman
Hello and welcome back to the Poultry Network podcast. I'm Tom Woolman and I'm joined this week ah by Jake Davis, Editor-in-Chief at Poultry Network. Hello, Jake.
00:00:27
Jake Davies
Hello, Tom. How are you doing?
00:00:29
Tom Woolman
I'm very well, very well. Yeah, the sun is shining on me today, but yeah, we haven't been seeing a lot of sun recently, which um which is all right.
00:00:31
Jake Davies
Good.
00:00:37
Tom Woolman
that's ah That's to be expected as autumn comes along.
LiveTech Biosecurity Podcast
00:00:41
Tom Woolman
um We're joined this week by Julian Spari, who is Group Technical Director of LiveTech, someone that a lot of people will be yeah will be familiar with. So I just want to say welcome, Jules.
00:00:54
Julian Sparrey
Thank you. That's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
00:00:57
Tom Woolman
That's all right. And I was just noting that this isn't your first podcast appearance. um you've You've got your own podcast going at Live Tech. Is that right?
00:01:07
Julian Sparrey
We do. And if I can plug that one, um my great colleague, Jack Hughes is is leading us here as of, uh, of podcasts really focused on biosecurity. So if you do have time after listening to the Poultry Network podcast, do pop over to the Live Tech podcast and learn a bit more about biosecurity.
00:01:27
Tom Woolman
Brilliant.
00:01:27
Jake Davies
Everyone has a podcast these days.
Preventing Avian Influenza
00:01:32
Tom Woolman
So maybe we could just start off, ah Julian, by byke just just give us a ah ah quick overview of LiveTech, what the business does and the different areas that you're involved in.
00:01:45
Julian Sparrey
So today LiveTech is more about prevention of diseases than controlling them. So our history has been that we've been involved in controlling outbreaks of avian influenza ah within the country for the past 15 years.
00:02:02
Julian Sparrey
and Not that we've had AI for the last 15 years, but that's what we've been building up to. We're prime contractor to the government um to deal with those.
Impact on UK Farms
00:02:10
Julian Sparrey
But our experience of those diseases and those outbreaks and being on over nearly 300 farms dealing with that in the last eight years, is to learn what happens when a disease is confirmed on a farm, what it means for the farmer, what it means for the business. um And that's led us to building a much bigger before portfolio of how to prevent those diseases, how to plan for those diseases, and how to get through it.
00:02:40
Julian Sparrey
So we yeah we like to talk of four Ps, if you like, prevention, protection, planning and prediction. So our ultimate goal is how can we predict better? And I'll maybe talk about that a bit a little bit later, we were going to talk about.
00:02:54
Julian Sparrey
um But certainly preventing the disease coming in it in the first place is much better than having to deal with it when it gets there.
00:03:01
Tom Woolman
Because it's certainly been pretty worrying times, I'd say, for UK producers where, um yeah, there's been a huge amount of cases, as you said, over the last, certainly if you go past, you know, the last last five years, really. I've been involved in a few myself.
00:03:16
Tom Woolman
And it's all sorts of businesses which have experienced them. You know, it's laying units, it's broiler units, it's broiler breeders. And even some of the primary breeders, you know, have even had their own cases, which is I guess a bit of an indication as to how strong the ah the viral challenge has been across the country.
00:03:36
Tom Woolman
um
Summer Cases and Virus Survival
00:03:37
Tom Woolman
Yeah. So maybe um you've you've been doing some work, haven't you? Looking at um forecasting into into what the next Avon influenza season is is going to have in store for us. I don't know.
00:03:50
Tom Woolman
What are you seeing at the moment and what are your thoughts?
00:03:52
Julian Sparrey
ah we We were all getting very worried through july June, July, when we were seeing higher than usual number of cases in the summer. We would normally expect this virus to die out in the environment ah with the temperatures, particularly the temperatures we had this summer, you over 30 degrees for several days at a time.
00:04:11
Julian Sparrey
And that would normally have led us to think that that it would kill the virus in the environment, which it potentially probably has. But what what we suspect is that it has maintained a pool of virus within wild bird species.
00:04:24
Julian Sparrey
ah Again, we saw this three years ago when there was huge die off in wild bird species around the coast with breeding colonies are gannets and gulls and things that um died and they decimated those populations. Well, they seem to have recovered to an extent.
00:04:41
Julian Sparrey
um Any inherent um immunity won't last forever. it It'll go through a couple of generations, but ah Gradually, those that survive will breed and they will get more naive birds in. So potentially, we are seeing more wild birds carrying the disease this the summer.
00:05:01
Julian Sparrey
um Through August, we we experienced about six or eight outbreaks, were there particularly in the pheasants down in down in the southwest.
00:05:13
Julian Sparrey
um And also people were reporting to us, farmers, seeing ah dead gulls on farm as well. and Now these aren't always reported. i know farmers a bit reticent about reporting into APHA that they've got dead wild birds on site, but it's really important that you that you do this because those are sentinels for where this disease is in the country.
00:05:36
Julian Sparrey
um Def Republic, wild bird findings, but it's only the tip of the iceberg. So birds that are reported in are just a small indicator of um what the presence of that virus is in the wild bird population.
00:05:50
Julian Sparrey
But we're we're told it's it's going in a sort of a three-year cycle. We're on the up again. um Now, it doesn't appear that we're going to be quite as bad as 22, 23, where we suddenly got nearly 100 cases in October.
00:06:04
Julian Sparrey
But we're probably on a two-third trajectory of that. So the the the having spoken to vets, to APHA, to epidemiologists,
00:06:07
Tom Woolman
Mm-hmm.
00:06:13
Julian Sparrey
um the The odds are this is this is going to be ah quite a heavy um winter for AI.
Weather and Migration Effects
00:06:20
Julian Sparrey
um Although we're coming two thirds the way through September, um and our last outbreak was at the end of August. So as with every prediction, ah the most likely thing is it'll turn out to be wrong.
00:06:33
Tom Woolman
Well, I'm very conscious that we've got the same problem as as various ah other companies.
00:06:33
Julian Sparrey
ah
00:06:40
Tom Woolman
programs that I could, i could you know, I quite enjoy drawing ah comparisons between this this podcast and have I got news for you, but you can make a prediction, can't you, and record it. and then And then by the time that the program goes out, something completely different has happened. So, but that that is the thing with AI, isn't it, is you've got to really expect the unexpected. And as you say, as we we were looking at the summer thinking this could really kick off in September and and and so far in September, it It hasn't necessarily kicked off in the in the way that we were expecting. but um
00:07:12
Julian Sparrey
these can These can be sort of affected by weather patterns as well.
00:07:12
Tom Woolman
so
00:07:12
Jake Davies
host the
00:07:16
Julian Sparrey
So we've suddenly gone into a bit bit of a wetter period. um that may build up a bit more virus, which we'll see in three or four weeks' time coming through in infected cases. So there is always that delay between, um you know, birds may be carrying the virus, but they may not be transmitting it. It may take a change in the weather for that to happen.
00:07:35
Julian Sparrey
And certainly we're going to get migration, inward migration soon. Again, that depends on weather patterns in in Eastern Europe as to whether and how wild birds from the from the east come looking for warmer climates, and what diseases are those carrying?
00:07:50
Julian Sparrey
you know we are In LiveTech, we're looking at you know what cases are occurring in Europe. We look at the lower data to see how whether there's any changes in the virus and things like that.
00:08:02
Julian Sparrey
So it's at this time of the year, the end of September, beginning November, where we might get a slight variation in the virus coming into the country. At the moment, we're dealing with a virus that's been in the UK for a while in the resident population.
00:08:15
Julian Sparrey
But that sort of coming together of the resident population and the wild bird, the incoming migrant migration in the in the autumn, that could cause a few changes as well. So again, it's it's all in a way, it's all to play for. It's suspected to be a bit worse than last year and the year before, where we were really down low on cases. but From that point of view, we're ready.
00:08:39
Julian Sparrey
yeah We're ready for it. um From the LivelyC point of view, we've we've ramped up our capability. we're ready for the um for the winter, whatever it throws at us.
00:08:50
Jake Davies
That's what I was going to ask and you sort of covered it. But I mean, I remember in previous years, everyone it would seem like everyone was looking over to Europe to see how the the spread of cases was coming along from Western Europe or or from Eastern Europe through to Western and But I guess it's more, like as you say, it's more like we've got domestic sort of virus circulating. And so so the key, if we if we do think about migrating wild birds, we're not quite there yet. Is that the case? We've got a few more weeks before the real sort of movement happens and and we'll see the impact of that.
00:09:21
Julian Sparrey
Yeah, it's it's normally yeah normally towards the end of and of October. I always remember going on to half-term holidays in Northumberland and you can see the geese starting to fly down the Northumberland coast and you think, okay, incoming.
00:09:34
Jake Davies
Mm-hmm.
00:09:37
Julian Sparrey
um But equally, you know, organizations like RSPB and BTO will be monitoring these things and and they display a lot of data these days about um migration and things like that, which, you know, we're...
00:09:48
Tom Woolman
No, I was going to remember being distinctly ah being on the site of an outbreak and and and literally standing there in the yard with them with the with geese flying overhead thinking, yeah, this is this is a live situation. It's going on.
00:10:03
Tom Woolman
Yeah.
00:10:06
Jake Davies
So ah ah not unrelated, but we were chatting um before this the podcast, Jules, about a project you're doing with some live goal
Tracking Gull Migration
00:10:15
Jake Davies
tracking. Is that is that a way good way to describe it?
00:10:17
Julian Sparrey
Yeah, so when we started looking at migration patterns and the fact that we've also got resident birds with um disease as well, um migration is a very broad brush treatment. you know I think it was back in...
00:10:32
Julian Sparrey
19... no, 2006, they started publishing these flyway maps, very broad sort of brushes of of where birds might come to. Well, roll on 20 years, and actually people are tagging individual birds with GPS tags.
00:10:47
Julian Sparrey
So there are projects, conservation projects, and all sorts. And this data um is available now, and we've been looking at looking at some of it. um and looking in particular at gull species that um were, in this particular case study I'm thinking of, is they were tagged in on the coast of Holland in their breeding grounds about three or four years ago. And these tags have lasted for for a very long time. And now there's probably about 60 or 70 birds left still flying with these on. And what amazed us was whilst they are sat in...
00:11:23
Julian Sparrey
in ah in a breeding colony for for a couple of months. Once they start ranging out to feed, they are coming across to the UK almost on a daily basis and to into the east of England and as far north as the pick district.
00:11:31
Jake Davies
you
00:11:36
Julian Sparrey
um And then for a couple of months, they're foraging around and then they're heading back out again to to the Dutch coast. And then for winter, they sort of head back down towards Spain and North Africa.
00:11:49
Julian Sparrey
And then they're flying back up again. But in real time, we can see where these birds are. And we had some outbreaks in Australia. end of July, August. And we could actually see these goals flying across those outbreaks, heading towards Cambridgeshire and onwards to Staffordshire and things like this.
00:12:05
Julian Sparrey
So goals do move on a daily basis a very long way. ah I think in the in the report that was written around that data, there was the maximum range they went 300 kilometres and a daily range was around 30 kilometres.
00:12:19
Julian Sparrey
And that is looking for food sources. um They are... they stay close together for certain months of the year and they range for certain months of the year. And we're just starting to put that data up on our on our platform now for for subscribed users anyway.
00:12:36
Julian Sparrey
um And it's It's fascinating to see how it moves, but it is a snapshot because it's only 70 birds out of ah you know a million or 10 million or however many gulls there are in in the country.
00:12:41
Jake Davies
Mm-hmm.
00:12:47
Julian Sparrey
But we know they are a carrier species. We know they are found dead on poultry farms. um So they are a risk. um And it's interesting to see at least the months in which they're fairly stationary and the months at which they're really ranging quite long distances.
00:13:02
Julian Sparrey
And they do sit on, they look for fresh water at night and they'll, they'll roost on fresh water at night and during the day, particularly now, they're looking for ploughed fields, and they're looking for scavenging on tips, they'll sit on your roof looking for field eggs, they'll they're looking for food all the time and they'll eat anything.
00:13:20
Julian Sparrey
So it has been a really interesting exercise and some of our clients will be getting that data very shortly so they can make their own judgment on on what it is. i say We're not saying that those girls are bringing the disease.
00:13:34
Julian Sparrey
What we're saying is they are moving disease around. There are bridge spaces potentially ah between that.
00:13:36
Jake Davies
Hmm. Hmm.
00:13:40
Julian Sparrey
It's it's ah it's ah been a really fascinating snapshot of of what's happening.
00:13:41
Tom Woolman
Mm-hmm.
00:13:45
Julian Sparrey
I think it relates, I'm just going on again now. I think it relates a little bit to people talking about ah the virus is blown on the wind. Well, in a way it is, but i from my opinion, it's the birds that are going with the wind. The bird's not going to fly against the wind.
00:13:59
Julian Sparrey
And these birds are flying quite long distances each day. So if the wind's blowing to the northeast, they'll go to the northeast. If it's blowing to the southwest, they'll go to the southwest. So whilst it looks like the virus is blowing tens, hundreds of kilometers on the wind.
00:14:13
Julian Sparrey
I don't believe it is. I think it's the birds that are taking it because they're following the wind. It seems much more sensible from a physics point of view that that's happening and bringing that, and Jake, I you mentioned before, that viral pressure to certain locations in the country.
00:14:21
Tom Woolman
Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:14:27
Julian Sparrey
So where we had those two outbreaks in Norfolk, lot of viral pressure there, and it's just suddenly burst into the farms.
00:14:35
Tom Woolman
So, Julian, a couple of weeks ago um on this podcast, we were speaking to a group of academics that were looking at resilience in the poultry meat sector and um resilience against disease outbreaks like avian influenza is is ah is a big part of that.
00:14:45
Julian Sparrey
Thank you.
00:14:52
Tom Woolman
You've been working very closely, haven't you, with with government and and um and with the industry over years of outbreaks. Do you think there are any things that we could do to make ourselves more resilient, whether at a farm level, but also, I guess, looking at the bigger picture as well in terms of the way that we deal with with some of these outbreaks on ah at a sort of national level and and an operational level?
Infrastructure and Biosecurity Improvements
00:15:18
Julian Sparrey
I think operationally um between you know the government, industry, um people like LiveTech, we've exercised you know the the outbreaks, the operations so much now.
00:15:32
Julian Sparrey
mean, we've been involved in about 300.
00:15:35
Julian Sparrey
we know we We know what we're doing. We know what we expect. APHA are working so much better than you know five years ago, um you know but we've been through the mill to get there. you know The only way we get to this point is by repeatedly having outbreaks.
00:15:51
Julian Sparrey
um But as we've seen in in in the last month or so, we get a positive finding, it's dealt with as fast as possible, and everyone tries to get back to business as usual as fast as possible.
00:16:03
Julian Sparrey
um In fact, it it it hardly makes the the the press in a way um these days ah because it's dealt with so well. Now, in terms of can we prevent more happening to be more resilient against getting the disease, there are still more more things we can do. I think everybody is aware of endlessly being told to improve their biosecurity. And we have this thing, ah biosecurity fatigue, which we think is new, it's not. If you talk to Jean-Pierre Valcourt, he he he termed the phrase in 1999, biosecurity fatigue, we're always banging on about it. But we've seen that it's it's possibly infrastructure that we could really work on now.
00:16:46
Julian Sparrey
um And we don't mean, you know, £20,000 worth of um vehicle spray. it's it's It's shed maintenance. NFU just put out the building survey looking at, the top of head, i think it was 15% of housing over 50 years old. It doesn't mean to say those those buildings are no good because they've been renovated and made better all in those times, but where where you may have a good building, you might not have a good curtilage. So if you've got muddy puddles around your farm, if you're not controlling drainage, then we know that water ingress
00:17:24
Julian Sparrey
is one of the big contributing factors to to bringing pathogens into the house. And it may not even be AI, it could be salmonella, it could be anything. Rodent control, wild bird exclusion from your site, all these things are, to us they're a summer job.
00:17:39
Julian Sparrey
We've had a beautiful summer, we could all be out there fixing the roof on our poultry sheds, fixing the gutters, fixing the curtilage so that we're less likely to bring contamination into the shed. And I think that's where If we were going to invest, that that's where we should we should be doing it
00:17:55
Tom Woolman
I mean but the this the salmonella point is a very interesting point actually because you're right an awful lot of the things that we've we've done and we've focused on because of avian influenza actually has also been pretty important in terms of maintaining our farms as as as being salmonella free or reducing the risk and incursion of salmonella, um which, um yeah, ah continues to be ah continues to be a ah threat with new and evolving um ah types coming along all the time.
00:18:23
Tom Woolman
So, yeah, yeah.
00:18:25
Julian Sparrey
That's definitely true. We saw a fall off in, because we only deal with salmonellas that are at the really bad end of stuff, where we have to remove a flock, unfortunately. But so during the big years of AI, we had much less of that. And that, I believe, is because people were so concerned about their biosecurity that they were keeping other stuff out.
00:18:42
Julian Sparrey
And it's this time of the year that salmonella creeps up because we're harvesting, we're moving rodents, we're spreading muck on the land, and that's bringing... fomites closer to the sheds.
00:18:54
Julian Sparrey
And again, if you're getting rats and mice into your sheds now, you may not see them, but we we all know they're there. So your pest control should be doubled down on in in in September and October when cultivation is going on all around you.
00:19:08
Tom Woolman
Mm-hmm.
00:19:09
Jake Davies
ah Just on that on the on the shed survey, I've pulled up some of stats. 7% of youth broader houses have not had any major refurbishment since they were built at least 50 years ago. and so you know, there's not any significant proportion. We've never had any major refurbishment. work It's 15%, I think you were right, or at least 50 years of old.
00:19:28
Jake Davies
The average house is 31 years of age. So, yeah, I mean, the NFU's point is quite right. big investment need there, isn't there, think.
00:19:37
Tom Woolman
It is, although it'll also be interesting to catch up with that survey, because certainly at the moment, shed builders are extremely busy, aren't they?
00:19:37
Julian Sparrey
Yeah.
00:19:44
Tom Woolman
um
Integrating Biosecurity in Farm Design
00:19:44
Jake Davies
Yeah.
00:19:45
Tom Woolman
yeah Trying to try and to um compensate for this for the shortage of space in both the egg sector and and the meat sector. So I think that's a really interesting survey that the NFU are doing. and And over a period of time, it it'll be interesting to see how it sort of waxes and wanes in terms of the the fortunes of the industry.
00:20:01
Jake Davies
We'll have to get Amy and Tom on to see, to have a chat about it perhaps. That'd be a good step. and
00:20:06
Tom Woolman
Yeah.
00:20:06
Jake Davies
I've got a couple of things I'd like to plug. um One is there's a new EFSA toolkit and we link to it in um on Poultry Network.
00:20:13
Julian Sparrey
Thank you.
00:20:13
Jake Davies
It's fairly prominent on the site at the moment. And they've got some really nice infographics and things like that and information in in every language, of every European language as well, which would be handy.
00:20:25
Jake Davies
So there's something to check out there. We we also ah Gordon Hickman and from DEFRA speaking at Poultry Network Live a couple of weeks ago. And there's there's also a report on our website, a text report in the old fashioned style, and sort of covering what he said, very similar sentiment I think to to yours, Jules, today that we may be in for a ah slightly tricky winter.
00:20:45
Jake Davies
And we also spoke to Wayne a few weeks ago on the podcast, Wayne Olbison the LanXess S, who went a bit more
00:20:48
Julian Sparrey
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:20:52
Jake Davies
detail about the cleaning, sort of the the mechanics of cleaning sheds and things like that, a turnaround. So a few bits and bobs to look at there if if any of this is of interest to you.
00:21:03
Jake Davies
And of course, um mean are the other thing to plug would be get in touch with LiveTech because there's a huge amount of stuff that they they do in that prevention space, as Jules said at the start, to get your business done.
00:21:16
Jake Davies
resilient um there's another thing we could plug the try some chicken project um because we spoke to those last week um but yeah yeah do if you want to say give a quick overview how you might help farm businesses that that might be helpful as well
00:21:23
Tom Woolman
Mm-hmm.
00:21:28
Julian Sparrey
I think one of the things that just, in a way, cropped into my head there is is if you are planning a new building or if you are refurbishing and then get some advice on how to build in biosecurity to the building rather than add it on later. We've seen too many.
00:21:42
Julian Sparrey
I know we're driven by the planners so much as to how these sheds are sited. But if you build the shed and then put the ah facilities at the far corner, not by the gate and things like that, it's it's it's looking at traffic flow, people flow.
00:21:55
Julian Sparrey
That's one of the essential aspects of designing the site so that you can minimise the requirement for anybody to come into the bioscure area of that site. So putting you know drop-off points, delivery points on the edge, making sure people don't have to drive all the way through the farm to find the office.
00:22:14
Julian Sparrey
um So if you are putting up a new shed or if you're refurbishing a shed, do get in touch with LiveTech and we can give you some pointers on some of the essential bits of... of infrastructure that can really help in maintaining Bioscure premises.
00:22:31
Tom Woolman
Brilliant.
00:22:32
Jake Davies
Cool.
00:22:32
Tom Woolman
Well, I guess that just remains for me to say thank you ever so much for speaking us today, Julian. um And um yeah, no doubt we'll keep in touch as as as the winter progresses and as we see what avian influenza has got in store for us
Conclusion and Resources
00:22:46
Tom Woolman
this week. but But yeah, thank you very much for coming on.
00:22:50
Julian Sparrey
No, it's a pleasure. And I should have probably said, download the free app on your phone and it gives you ah all the outbreak data, all the wild bird data um to look at for free, located to your farm.
00:23:02
Tom Woolman
Brilliant, that sounds very interesting.
00:23:05
Jake Davies
Thank you.