Introduction

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer’s hard drive by your web browser when you visit any website. They allow information gathered on one web page to be stored until it is needed for use on another, allowing a website to provide you with a personalised experience and the website owner with statistics about how you use the website so that it can be improved.

Some cookies may last for a defined period of time, such as one day or until you close your browser. Others last indefinitely. The timescales for each cookie are listed in this document.

Your web browser should allow you to delete any cookies you choose. It also should allow you to prevent or limit their use.

Our website uses cookies. They are placed by software that operates on our servers, and by software operated by third parties whose services we use.

When you first visit our website, we ask you whether you wish us to use cookies. If you choose not to accept them, we shall not use them for your visit except to record that you have not consented to their use for any other purpose.

If you choose not to use cookies or you prevent their use through your browser settings, you will not be able to use all the functionality of our website.

We use cookies in the following ways:

• to track how you use our website
• to record whether you have seen specific messages we display on our website
• to keep you signed into our site
• to record your answers to surveys and questionnaires on our site while you complete them

Essential website cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with the services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Performance and function cookies

These cookies are used to enhance the performance and function of our website. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to remember your preferences where relevant.

Analytics and customisation cookies

These cookies collect information that is used to help us understand how our website is being used. These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. The Agri-EPI Centre uses Google Analytics.

Targeting cookies

These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website more relevant to your interests. You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics supports three JavaScript libraries (tags) for measuring website usage: gtag.js, analytics.js, and ga.js, and they set the following cookies:

Cookie Name	Expiration	Description
_ga	2 years	Used to distinguish users.
_gid	24 hours	Used to distinguish users.
_gat	1 minute	Used to throttle request rate. If Google Analytics is deployed via Google Tag Manager, this cookie will be named _dc_gtm_.
AMP_TOKEN	30 seconds to 1 year	Contains a token that can be used to retrieve a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. Other possible values indicate opt-out, inflight request or an error retrieving a Client ID from AMP Client ID service.
_gac_	90 days	Contains campaign related information for the user. If you have linked your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts, Google Ads website conversion tags will read this cookie unless you opt-out. Learn more.

We do not share the information collected by the cookies with any third parties.

Unclassified Cookies

These cookies are yet to be classified.

Web Beacons

Cookies are not the only way to track website visitors. We may use other, similar technologies occasionally, like web beacons (sometimes called “tracking pixels” or “clear gifs”). These are tiny graphic files that contain a unique identifier that enables us to recognise when someone has visited our website. This allows us to manage traffic patterns of users. We do not currently use Web Beacons.

In many instances, these technologies are reliant on cookies to function properly, and so declining cookies will impair their functionality.

How to block or delete cookies

If you wish to block or delete cookies you can do this via your browser. All browsers are different so please select the ‘Help’ menu on your browser for instructions on how you can do this or you may wish to visit aboutcookies.org which contains detailed guidance on how to block or delete cookies or www.aboutads.info/choices and www.youronlinechoices.eu which provide more information about how you can opt out of collection and use of your information for ad targeting. Please note that if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our website.

Updates to this policy

We may update this cookie policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to the cookies we use or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons. Therefore, please re-visit this policy in order to stay informed about our use of cookies and related technologies.  The date at the top of this policy indicates the last update.

Further information

If you have any questions about our use of cookies or other technologies, please email us: dataprotection@agri-epicentre.com.