Page 12 - Autumn 14

IAVH Newsletter continued
Project Activities
IMPRO is led by academic researchers, but a participatory and multi-disciplinary approach is built into its design. Farmers, veterinarians, health regulatory authorities and customers will all be involved in the research activities and in the interpretation and dissemination of findings. The four years of research (2012 to 2016) will be carried out as nine work packages.
1 Coordination and scientific project management
Scientists in the Faculty of Organic Agriculture at University of Kassel will coordinate the efforts of the partners to ensure the scientific outcomes are met.
2 On-farm assessment of effective measures by an impact matrix
The impact matrix is a farm-centric diagnostic tool that farmers and their advisers can use to give a sound diagnosis of the health status on the farm and help in identifying the most effective measures to improve animal health. Workshops in four countries will discuss and identify the variables to include in the matrix; the matrix will then be used on a sample of 200 organic dairy farms.
3 Improving monitoring and prevention on the herd level
We will develop new protocols for pro-active monitoring of cow and herd health and prevention of illhealth in organic systems. They will be tested on 40 farms to see if they lead to an improvement in health and are acceptable to farmers.
4 Manageability of alternative treatments
Protocols or decision trees for prescribing and using homeopathic remedies will be developed on the basis of the best available scientific evidence. Bernhard helps to optimize an organigram for treating mastitis which will be handed out to farmers and vets to improve the homeopathic treatment.
They will then be tested on a sample of farms and compared with the outcomes of more
conventional protocols on a separate sample, in the specific case of mastitis. The effect of this process will be evaluated after a period of a year.
Decisions trees for treatment of Mastitis, Fertility Disorders and Metabolic diseases were developed in our meeting in Frankfurt. Then we improved the questionnaire for the vets and farmers. The evaluation of the answers will give an impression about how they use homeopathy in dairy farms. We tested the questionnaire with a countrywoman during our visit of the Dottenfelderhof near Frankfurt (http://www.dottenfelderhof.de; see picture).
One part of the questionnaire was to find out which level of knowledge the cattle - treating farmer or vet has in homeopathy.
We defined it in the following way:
1 No knowledge: use of complex
remedies or Schüssler salts
2 Basic knowledge: approved indications
3 Advanced knowledge: anamnesis;
individual assesment of single animals - Repertory
- Acknowledgement of remedies (Materia medica)
- Homeopathic remedy picture
4 Expert: Compiling a hierarchy of symptoms. Symptoms according to §
153 Organon
5 Top level: Miasm or core of a remedy
How will we gain the information to categorise the level auf knowledge? The answers to the following question will be evaluated:
“How do you choose a remedy to treat a difficult or chronic case? Please give a short description!”
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5 Socio-economic implications of changes in the management
We will identify factors that affect farmers’ willingness to use the impact matrix and protocols.
We will explore costs and returns on each farm, but also farmers’ attitudes and values and
Visiting the cow barn in the Dottenfelder Hof.
the influence of those around them. Surveys of 200 farmers will be carried out in the first and fourth years of the project, to see if using the impact matrix has had any effect on farmers’ attitudes and management practices.
6 Development of a software-based decision support tool
The team will bring together the lessons learned from the impact matrix and protocols in a computer-based tool that farmers and their advisers can use to identify changes in management that would lead to improvements in animal health.
7 Outreach
A communication strategy will guide IMPRO’s interaction with those with an interest in using the findings. The project website, meetings with farmer and professional associations, scientific publications and mass media will all play a part in ensuring the research findings are known and applied.
8 Administrative project management
The partners will hold regular meetings and video conferences to keep the project on track.
9 Research on the use of alternative remedies in livestock farming
The team will assess the potential for reducing the use of antibiotics in managing organic dairy cow health by making use of alternative methods. The wide range of topics involved and expertise required will be covered by a combination of literature research, question- naires, workshops and simulation modelling.
Markus Mayer (office@iavh.org), Bernhard Hornig under use of project informations (www-impro-diary.eu) T
The working group in front of a building of the Dottenfelder Hof nearby Frankfurt from left to right: Manon de Joybert (Nantes Atlantic College of Veterinary Medicine), Diana Keller (University of Kassel), Cristina Iglesias Hidalgo, Loic Guiouillier, Isabel Blanco Penedo, Prof. Dr. Albert Sundrum (University of Kassel) and Dr. Bernhard Hornig. Behind the camera: Markus Mayer
Mastitis treatment
In a second step next year the IMPRO-project starts a comparison between allopathic and homeopathic treatment of mastitis.
Unfortunately we have not enough good homeopathic vets in Europe and therefore we should give vets and maybe the farmers a possibility, to learn and to heal with homeopathic remedies. Therefore in this investigation we want to help farmers and vets to treat mastitis with homeopathy successfully, using a decision tree and an organigram.
The degree of success of this study will perhaps be a measure for the effectiveness of homeopathic treatment in general.
The IAVH or other institutes will take the role of providing information and apprenticeship. With the help of some enthusiastic colleagues I will try to make a repertory about cattle, to make it easier for our homeopathic colleagues, but I need much support from you. Everyone who treats large cattle should take part in this project. Please if you think that this is a unique chance for homeopathy then give your e-mail address to Markus and I will send you my collection of Radar s rubrics to work with and to expand it with your knowledge. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. Bernhard Hornig