Homoeopathy for farm animals – and freedom

There will be lots of us who question this moral high ground, and what really is ‘good animal welfare’? The mantra seems to preclude proper discussion.

Is it not in many cases economic reality? There seems to be no consistency. While the elderly dog is kept alive at all costs, the limping cow or pony will be shot. A farmer may prefer to nurse his animal through illness but conventional medicine, often because it offers no cure, may demand a cull on welfare grounds.

It seems difficult to get to honesty here. Neither is automatically right or wrong, but the desire of an owner, especially a farmer, to ‘care’ rather than ‘cull’ should not be used against him or her in the guise of ‘bad welfare’.

The debate rages in human health care too. Are we really arguing about the wrong thing? Surely our concern needs to be about what is best for the patient, be it animal or human, with a concern for the patients and the consumers preference. Does it have to be them and us? Is there not room for skillful practitioners of all systems?

This has all been brought to a head by the EU Directive, first proposed in 2001, and to be implemented by each member country, which makes all farm animal medicines Prescription Only (POM) and specifically includes homoeopathy. So the farmer’s freedom to treat his or her animals as they think best is to be reduced, and not just in homoeopathic terms.

On the Veterinary Medicines Directorate website a medicine is defined as: ‘….any substance or combination of substances presented as having properties for treating or preventing disease in animals; or

(b) any substance or combination of substances that may be used in, or administered to, animals with a view either to restoring, correcting or modifying physiological functions by exerting a pharmacological, immunological or metabolic action, or to making a medical diagnosis’.

Now this is getting very wide indeed. Will it eventually include herbal preparations, mineral licks, minerals added to foods, the beneficial herbs added to pasture? Indeed, will it eventually include food, defined long ago by Hippocrates as being the ‘best medicine’? Already many food supplements have been removed from the shelves by similar legislation, written actually to facilitate free trade.

The farmer’s job is to maintain an animal in good health and, quite apart from natural concern and legal responsibility, it is his or her vested interest to do this because a sick animal is not a profitable one. Most farmers will agree that this is best done by promoting health rather than fire fighting disease. So, at what point does prevention begin and whose decision does it become?

The VMD has the difficult task of implementing this legislation in UK. They are very genuinely trying to work out something sensible, within what many of us feel is flawed legislation. So they have asked for comment, and run meetings where questions can be raised, but they are obliged to enforce it.

It would be marvellous if lots of farmers, and animal owners generally, were to respond to the VMD, stating why they use it and why they think it is a necessary part of the management strategy. 

After October 2006 many homoeopathic remedies farmers use to promote herd and flock health will simply be illegal, many others will be POM, the actual details are still being debated (the webpage is http://www.vmd.gov.uk/General/VMR/vmr05.htm).

Where there seems to be a big flaw in this Directive is that, drawn up as it is to facilitate ‘free trade’ it would, inadvertently, seem to be allowing freedom of trade to reduce the freedom of, or even the requirement for, the individual to accept responsibility to promote their own or their animals’ health.

It is difficult to ignore the fact that a debate is opening up in the medical world about evidence-based medicines altogether. They are estimated to be the third most common cause of death in the USA. Lots of them are withdrawn because they are found to be not safe. There is concern about the commercial drive behind them, the honesty of the evidence and the disinterest of practitioners. Big stuff.

Work by psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff suggests that within her profession the pharmaceuticals have presented a ‘good but inaccurate’ case and then provided chemical answers.

It is up to each of us to let our Government know what we feel about their legislation. It is actually astonishing how few letters to officials can change policy.

I have always understood that the first principle of promotion is to avoid rubbishing the opposition. Logic and experience tell us there is a place for all therapies and a need for much more openness.

Therefore, I have no argument with vets who prefer not to use homoeopathy themselves, indeed if they are not qualified in the subject I am surprised that personal and professional integrity allows them to prescribe it at all. The freedom not to use it is indeed theirs.

However, one must question their freedom to prevent others choosing or using it for themselves, their children and their animals.

Chris Lees is teacher and agriculturalist, and founder of ‘Homoeopathy at Wellie Level’, a course which teaches the responsible use of homoeopathy on the farm. Information about farm animal homoeopathy can be found on www.hawl.co.uk, with links to organisations like the British Homoeopathic Veterinary Association and the Society of Homoeopaths.