Page 7 - Autumn 16

a German account. However, because it is almost impossible to get a bank account on the name of an organisation (as above), we decided that Markus should open the account in his own name. This account is now closed and the money has been transferred to the IAVH Swiss account.
In 2015 the IMPRO project (see opposite column) gave some extra income – and some stress. In July, a large amount of money was paid into the IAVH account by the University of Kassel. It turned out that double VAT had to be paid in the way the payments were arranged. Therefore the money was paid back in December, and a number of people were paid directly by the University of Kassel. Because there were 5 months in between, part of the money was already spent to pay other things. Therefore €8000 was taken from the Swiss saving account to fill that gap on the Freiburg account. At the end of the year, there was €10.938,45 on the Freiburg account. The money was not immediately transferred back to the Swiss savings account, and because we had no income, the money was spent for other needs. I propose that as soon as enough yearly fees are paid by the members, we return the €8000 to the savings account. The IAVH gained €746,33 with the IMPRO-project.
The office of Manfred Markhorst will change the way we will get our fee from the members: there will be an automatic system, where members from all over the world can pay by PayPal.
Minako [Kuroda] proposed to start a fund, where people (mainly board members) from the less rich countries can ask for help, when the costs for attending a meeting or a congress are a problem for them. There will be a discussion if the yearly membership fee will be revised, according to the table of membership payments based on HDI (Human Development Index).
We had a loss this year of €1484,86. A growing organisation gives more members, and also more expenses, like travel and accommodation costs for board members. We must consider the option that in the future it will not be possible to meet in person every year because of the travel costs.
We hope that the new Office will improve our financial situation, as it is less costly than
IAVH Website and Forum Report – Don Hamilton It’s been a busy year with both the website and the forum.
Website: Helene and I, with the help of friends here [Vienna] and also with IAVH colleague Gemma Hervàs and her husband, David, worked to keep the old website working, despite it’s being severely out of date and problematic. We had a few crashes as a result of the out-of-date software upon which the site was built. The site had become a security risk for the hosting service, and so they had to block our site this autumn, until we could get the risks patched, but this was the last piece of evidence that we must build a new site. Additionally, we have worked a lot on updating the site, as it has been mostly ignored for the past two or three years, at least. Not much was changed since 2013.
Partly because of the desperate need to update the software architecture, and also because of ongoing opinions that the site is dry and uninteresting, we are now in the process of having a new site created by a website designer, at less than half of the cost of the original site development. We have fully discussed these issues and changes at numerous online and in-person board conferences. We will show the design, which is still in process, at the Vienna board conference. We feel the site will greatly help the IAVH stay modern and to have a stronger web presence.
Forum: As Markus Mayer resigned as the IAVH office manager at the end of 2015, he requested that the IAVH discussion forum be moved to a new site. Markus had put the forum on his own gmail forum account. In the autumn, I moved the forum to the IAVH web site. I have also been updating forum membership, as the former office staff also did not properly maintain the forum membership list. Almost the entire Austrian membership, for example, was never added to the forum discussion list, despite their having agreed to join as national members in 2014. Fortunately this came to light recently, and I have corrected this as of October 2016.
Since moving the forum, the discussions, which were almost nonexistent the past year, have really blossomed. The forum is active, lively, and helpful. The new forum address is forum@iavh.org
Additionally, I am in the process of making some minor changes to IAVH email addresses. I will change the password to the office@iavh.org address, as this has remained the same for some years. I also have asked Manfred Markhorst to change the secretary address for Sam, our great new office manager, to secretary@iavh.org rather than using a gmail address.
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The IMPRO project by Liesbeth Ellinger, The Netherlands
Impact matrix analysis and cost-benefit calculations to improve management practices regarding health status in organic dairy farming
Under the leadership of Professor Albert Sundrum an investigation was made on several topics. The consumer expects healthier and “happier” animals in organic husbandry, but are these expectations met in practise?
The answer is no. In organic husbandry the animals are not healthier, when a comparison is made for “production diseases”: mastitis, ketosis, lameness and fertility. The project mainly concentrated on the diagnosis at farm level via a participatory approach based on impact analysis. Together with farmers and advisors an investigation was made on all parameters, which could be important for animal health, and all costs were also taken into account. Then suggestions for change were made. The farmers were willing to make a number of changes and implementing them on their farm.
So far, there have not been registered measurable changes in animal after treatment following the suggestions. A number of farmers used alternative medicine, most of them unexperienced and without the help of an expert. It couldn’t be seen that it had sufficient effect.
Literature reviews show that cure rates with antibiotics, alternative treatment or placebo varied greatly between studies; none of the studies with alternative treatment has been reproduced. Thus, the use of homeopathic or phyto-therapeutic products cannot claim to have a reliable effect and a sufficient prognostic validity.
The effect of alternative treatment in practice on farms is highly context-dependent and is doubtful without the consistent implementation of lege-artis procedure, including early registration of symptoms, detailed diagnostic procedure, removal of the main causes, selection of the appropriate remedies, follow-up check of the recovery process and documentation of the success of the therapy. While the therapeutic success is the result of the overall effort to improve living conditions and treatment effort, the level of envisaged cure rates determines the means and the degree of effort required to achieve the target in the context of the farm system involved.