Ethnoveterinary medicine: A resource for development

credit: Paul Mundy

Sheep and goats in some villages in West Java, Indonesia, are remarkably free from the intestinal worms that curse livestock in many parts of the world. Why? Because of how the animals are kept. They spend their lives in bamboo sheds built on stilts, and their owners feed them with grass and other fodder cut from the edges of fields. The animals never go out to graze; their droppings fall through the gaps in the slatted floor of the shed. The life cycle of the worms, which relies on an animal eating worm eggs (and/or their larvae) deposited within the faeces of another, is broken. If an animal does get ill, its owner will force it to drink a herbal concoction: a recipe passed down from parents to children for centuries. These are examples of what is called 'ethnoveterinary medicine': traditional practices used by livestock raisers all over the world to keep their animals healthy and productive, and to treat and control diseases.

Over the last 10-15 years, development professionals have come to recognise the potential of ethnoveterinary medicine. Growing numbers are studying the knowledge of the herders and farmers they are working with. An understanding of local practices can help stimulate appropriate solutions to complex problems. Field workers who are familiar with the livestock holder's terminology can communicate better with them. If farmers or herders feel they are respected, they may be more ready to listen to the outsider's advice.

Learning and documenting local practices also helps preserve the knowledge before it is lost forever. Little of this knowledge has been written down, and many young people are not interested in learning from their parents.

The planning and implementation of livestock development projects increasingly take advantage of local people's knowledge. But they promote relatively few specific ethnoveterinary practices. Ideally, at the beginning of a community-based animal health project, staff and community members should together screen the range of local practices. Some may be parallel to a modern practice - grazing certain species together, for example - and can be promoted directly. Others may need testing and refining - for instance to test the efficacy and dosage of a herbal drug. Still others might be used together with modern practices in a blend of old and new.

Such participatory bottom-up approaches, however, can be time-consuming. They may be more difficult than just introducing ready-made modern healthcare packages. Plant medicines are hard to standardize and can be a bother to prepare. The right flowers or fruits may not be available throughout the year.

credit: Evelyn Mathias

Unfortunately, there has been little clinical research on ethnoveterinary practices in livestock. Rather more testing has been done in laboratory animals, but it is not always possible to assume that a mouse reacts in the same way as a cow. As in trials of modern medicines, tests of promising ethnoveterinary remedies sometimes fail to show any effect. In some instances because the remedy does not work for the tested disease, in others perhaps because the trial does not last long enough, or because the experiment excludes some other important factors (such as feed or housing).

To ignore ethnoveterinary medicine in development would mean losing an important opportunity. To give one example: Rwandan cattle raisers use a preparation made from Neorautanenia mitis to treat mange, a disease caused by mites that burrow under the animals' skin. Scientists found that this plant contained an ingredient that kills the mites. They were able to make an ointment for humans as an alternative to imported drugs that few rural Rwandans can afford.

The challenge is to find effective, appropriate practices for differing conditions. We can identify three types of problems:

• For acute, life-threatening infections and epidemics, modern medicine such as antibiotics will remain the first choice.
• For common diseases and chronic conditions (colds, skin diseases, worms, wounds, reproductive disorders, nutritional deficiencies, mild diarrhoea and so on), ethnoveterinary medicine has much to offer and should be strongly considered as an alternative or complement to modern treatments. This is especially true because some antibiotics and other drugs have been overused, stimulating resistance among micro-organisms and leaving dangerous residues in meat, milk and groundwater.
• For problems such as ticks and trypanosomiasis, neither modern nor ethnoveterinary medicine alone provides a satisfactory solution. A combination of modern and local remedies and management practices might be best.

Clearly, more research on the efficacy and economics of ethnoveterinary medicine is needed if policy makers and development professionals are to begin using it on a regular basis. However, as with all types of indigenous knowledge, there is a danger that outsiders appropriate ethnoveterinary knowledge, with little benefit trickling back to the community that developed it. Safeguards are required to ensure that the originators of the knowledge benefit from its wider adaptation and use.

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