Mars’ New Team, Interoperability, UK Costs, and Much Needed Help
You're listening to the Birdbath presented by The Fountain Report. I'm your host, Ryan Leech. Welcome back to The Birdbath. Each week we scrape the surface of the news you need to know, so let's get into it. If you've been with us since the beginning, you already knew this story was coming down the line.
Ryan Leech:The United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority, the CMA, has announced that they will be launching a formal market investigation into the country's veterinary sector conditional on the outcome of public comments. Now you shouldn't be surprised by this because just a little over 6 months ago in September of last year, we hit on the CMA tackling CBS Group as well as many of the other consolidators in the United Kingdom about anti competitive as well as price issues. So how this process works in the United Kingdom, it was news to me, was that there's a 6 month investigatory period, and then they do a formal investigation. And that period has a time where people can make public comments. That period then ends in April.
Ryan Leech:And then there's an 18 to 24 month deeper investigation into the market. The CBS group had major stock hits when we first hit on this in September, dropping them to higher than they were pre COVID, but still pretty significantly. But as of the time we recorded this episode, the shares of their stocks have dropped over 50% since the initial report in September. They were at a all time high of over 2,000, almost 22100 Great British Pounds, and now they're down to only a1000. It's still slightly above their pre COVID numbers, but they could be in for a rough ride when the public comments close in April.
Ryan Leech:I definitely recommend people keeping their eye on this, as well as understanding what this is gonna mean for a lot of the other groups across the United Kingdom. And if the trends that we see year after year of what the UK is seeing then trickling down to the US market, it's something that we shouldn't be surprised to see if there some sort of a conversation by the FTC to see about potential opportunities or potential causes of anti competition within the US US market. We're calling on you to have your voice be heard. The Association For Veterinary Infomatics is doing an interoperability project and looking for people that can give their insights on how the industry is working together. What they've said is the AVI Interoperability Project is leading an effort to develop standards and protocols that will improve the aggregation, analysis, and exchange of veterinary data.
Ryan Leech:As we just talked about in the previous story, there is an increase in consolidation in the space. But even for the larger groups, many of them are not sharing the data with one another. We spoke to an intelligence editorial adviser, CEO of Outlier Advisors, and a member of the AVI project team, Candace Goodwin. And Candice said the success of this ambitious project hinges on the diverse insights and experiences of professionals across the veterinary field. The team there is hoping to garner responses from a really wide range of industry members.
Ryan Leech:We're gonna put a link to the survey in our show notes, and we would love to hear from you. The only way that we can improve the way that we work as an industry is by sharing this information and data. So take the survey and figure out what makes sense for you. Mars had a large announcement last week. Mars Veterinary Health has added a new formation of a medical affairs science team.
Ryan Leech:The medical affairs science team will focus on design, execution, and management of what they're calling high quality and efficient clinical studies. The goal is to allow Mars Veterinary Health to contribute to the advancements of clinical science and research for the profession. Doctor Dottie Brown said in the press release, as a purpose driven global organization at the forefront of veterinary care, we have the special opportunity to harness our knowledge, reach, and data driven insights to lead industry changing research and science. This new team marks another step forward in the pursuit to advance veterinary medicine and ultimately make a better world for pets. If you're not familiar with the nuances of the structure within Mars, Mars Veterinary Health is one of the major global divisions within Mars Pet Care, which is a division within Mars family of companies, And the whole goal of how they see the business is to advance the veterinary profession for the health and well-being of the pets, people, and planet.
Ryan Leech:They have over 3,000 clinics underneath their purview and 70,000 associates. So it's a very large team, and I think the whole thing we're doing this week is linking it to the previous stories. They have a massive, massive amount of data and access to information. And the ability to utilize this medical affairs science team would allow them to be able to do faster clinical studies and roll out higher care and level of information that the goal as an external industry person here would would hope that they can trickle that down for us to be able to increase the quality of life for patients and pets and animals across the globe. So I hope to see that this is something spectacular.
Ryan Leech:I I really would like to see where this can go. And I think perhaps increasing their interoperability, whether it's through a service like ABC Intelligence and how they're utilizing their research genius to be able to allow different communications to talk. But any way that we can take this data from within the Mars ecosystem and open it up to allow people from across the industry to be able to participate, I think would be a a very welcome addition to our space. Good news for people in difficult situations. A recent study published in the journal of American Veterinary Medical Association shows that pet care could help domestic violence survivors seek aid faster.
Ryan Leech:The study reports that a significant percentage of survivors reported the concern for their pets' welfare as the reason why they delayed attempts to escape abuse, keeping both the human and animal survivors in continued dangers. In many report, children were also witnesses and or survivors, which in turn linked to a higher risk of perpetrating animal cruelty themselves. Now, obviously, this is a difficult and tough topic to talk about, but it's one that does have a massive amount of data about recurrence and sort of the cyclical and and terrible nature of this YWCA Northeast Kansas Center For Safety and Empowerment in Topeka, Kansas, and they established a temporary housing program that could provide short notice, full service care for pets of domestic violence survivors. The program relied in part on the corporation's extensive research, which pills has a huge background in taking care of shelter animals and really putting out their hand to be able to help pets in need. And also, they relied on a very large group of volunteers.
Ryan Leech:As part of the study and part of the work, the teams put together procedures for everything from identification, intake, medical and behavioral needs, shelter of pets, as well as a way to be able to track and understand what was going on. There were volunteers working within veterinary clinics as well as volunteers working within domestic abuse and domestic violence centers. The study's authors really set out to hope that they could find a detailed way to allow people to understand the foster care process for their animals so that they could get into healthier and safer positions. Now doctor Pierce of the study said we wanted to allow others to to create similar programs locally without having to reinvent the wheel for themselves. It would be a great way for any company that views itself as a pillar of their local community to get involved and give back.
Ryan Leech:Now I love that last sentence. I I love whenever people challenge these large companies to be able to participate and and step up and and help things. A couple of the businesses and players in the space that I know are doing something major. There's an incredible course for people within veterinary clinics to be able to identify and also get animal abuse perpetrators brought all the way to a courtroom and to be found guilty when that is the situation. There's a course called victim to verdict through Oregon State University.
Ryan Leech:It's led by an incredible team of forensic veterinarians and scientists and doctors that have really dug deep into this, as well as there's another business, Bestie BNB, which we've talked about a little bit. They're part of the the new Leap Venture Studios' most recent accelerator program. And Bestie BNB actually works to get these animals homes and opportunities to be able to be taken care of and find that temporary housing for them. So, a heavy and a difficult topic, but one that's extremely important and and really neat to be able to see that Hills as well as the YWCA in Northeast Kansas stepped up. Always appreciate when people step out of their their comfort zone to discuss these things and bring them up.
Ryan Leech:So thank you to everyone working hard on this. I'm gonna make sure that we link the report so that people can actually see some of these actionable steps. So like doctor Pierce said, you don't have to reinvent the wheel for yourself. So thank you again to everyone that steps up to take care of others. For more on these and other stories, join us by subscribing to the fountain Report.
Ryan Leech:There's a link in the bio. And don't miss out on any episodes by subscribing and rating the show. For The Birdbath, I'm Ryan Leach. See you next week.
