I was reading an Aussie biodynamic-farm website the other day where they say much the same thing – they treat the animals homeopathically except as a last resort to prevent suffering. So they’ll basically do nothing until suffering sets in, then they’ll act. It seems the problem is that once they treat them with real medicine, the produce can no longer be marketed as organic. I guess it’s true though that an animal that survives infection with no useful intervention will end up with a stronger immune system. Like people who survive being hit by a bus are more likely to pay attention when crossing the road in future. Reply
Yeh, yeh, yeh, all very impressive – But I can trump that! 😉 “Tineke is the supreme winner of the Rural Women New Zealand “Enterprising Rural Women Award for 2010: with her Waikato-based business Homeopathic Farm Support Ltd.” Although later the article does note that “Tineke has over the years had to show real resilience and a determination to succeed in the face of skepticism and little belief in alternative of methods of healing.” So maybe she got the award for resilience rather than the efficacy of her products’ packaging. Either way, I feel I need to take a course of Lord Ernest Rutherford’s laboratory bench, 30c, for 11 days. (It cures belief in quackery. Apparently. Well actually I made that up. Although, in my defence, the homeopaths started it!) Reply
Hmmm… The publication Farmers Weekly recently had a homeopath in the finals of their ‘Livestock Adviser of the Year’ competition. At least she admitted: It’s important that you’re not trying to take the place of the vet. The article also said: Support for her initiative has come from various sources including the Prince of Wales who donated £5000 at the start. “That went towards the marketing,” she says. No surprise there, then. Pity the money wasn’t spent on decent research. Reply
Zeno you never fail to amaze me. You know absolutely everything about everything. “As a result, we have been using homeopathic treatments on our Yeo Valley farms alongside conventional medicines for approximately 18 months and have seen some excellent results which has been a pleasant and surprising experience for us.” Which bit of that statement don’t you understand? Which part can only be explained away by placebo? Those dumb fucking cows. You are making yourself look very stupid IMO. Reply
“However, these trials depend on human observations that, without standardised observational measures or independent veterinary surgeons, can suffer significant (unintentional) bias. ” Where is your proof this statement is fact? What disorders have been treated and what observations were made? Reply
So it’s gone eh? What I’m getting at is that your statement “However, these trials depend on human observations that, without standardised observational measures or independent veterinary surgeons, can suffer significant (unintentional) bias. Those studies that correct for observational biases show that homeopathy does not work.” has no basis. What does yeo valley treat its cattle for? How many head of cattle is given homeopathy? Why? What are the outcomes? If the outcomes are that the cows look happier then I would agree it’s observational, but what if it’s levels of mastitis decreasing or increased milk production? What would be your explanation? Don’t spout about science and evidence then make crap statements when you don’t know what you are talking about. Reply
@Fed up .. You’re not really trying to defending the use of homeopathy to stop flies bothering cows!! Have you read the Yeo Valley page? If you have then you’d see the list of things they say they use homeopathy for … it’s a list of farily minor things, no mention of mastitis etc. “using homeopathic treatments and remedies to treat his cows for a number of issues, including warding-off flies and easing the cows’ stress levels when having their feet clipped. ” I fully agree that it would be nice to see a full list of conditions. However, based on what Yeo Valley have on their website then I think it’s pretty safe to say any improvement would be ‘observational’ – How exactly do you judge if a cow on homeopathy is less bothered by flies than one not on homeopathy – especially if the whole herd in on homeopathy and stood in a field full of cow crap! Another clue to the observational nature of any improvements is the comment “Steve’s convinced that homeopathic treatments offer a viable, practical option”. So it seems it’s Steve’s opinion. Would ‘Steve the Herd Manager’ be biased? Well he’s just done a course in homeopathy! Interestingly they make no mention of a vet being involved in the use of homeopathy (or observing/recording any improvements). The RCVS code of practice states that: “Other complementary therapists 17. All other forms of complementary therapy in the treatment of animals, including homoeopathy, must be administered by veterinary surgeons. It is illegal, in terms of the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966, for lay practitioners however qualified in the human field, to treat animals. At the same time it is incumbent on veterinary surgeons offering any complementary therapy to ensure that they are adequately trained in its application.” Forgetting for a moment that homeopathy doesn’t work …. what they are doing may well be illegal! Reply
Ho hum. @fed up The question in your first post, “Which part can only be explained away by placebo?” is a non sequitur. As homeopathic ‘remedies’ contains no active ingredients, it makes no difference if they are used “alongside conventional medicines” or not. It follows that the “excellent results” seen by the respondent are attributable either to the conventional medicines or just to regression to mean. That there is no robust scientific evidence that homeopathic ‘remedies’ work in any way on anyone or anything, is hardly surprising as there is no plausible mechanism by which homeopathic ‘remedies’ can work. As for the quotation in your second and third posts, if you don’t accept the authority of its source, why don’t you address your question directly to him or her? You’ll find their contact details on the briefing paper zeno links to. By the way, your suggestion that zeno doesn’t know what he’s talking about makes you look pretty stupid yourself. And not just IMO. Nice response, SB, thanks for taking the time. Reply
This is my response to skepticat on chiro live, http://www.chiropracticlive.com/mind-body-spirit-the-placebo-effect-by-ben-goldacre/#comment-3993 SB “You’re not really trying to defending the use of homeopathy to stop flies bothering cows!!” lol If it was given to the flies maybe! But as usual you alter the facts to suit yourself. Steve is a herd manager, so looked after the animals using conventional medicine then tried homeopathy, so he has had experience with the animals before and after. “to treat his cows for a number of issues, including warding-off flies and easing the cows’ stress levels when having their feet clipped. The treatments have so far proved successful and, unlike with antibiotics,” including, but not only, flies, but then again do you think they used anti biotics to ward of those damn flies and to help with stress and toe nails? The fact he keeps mentioning anti biotics possibly means he has been using homeopathy as a substitute, agreed? Also Steve had his job before doing a course in homeopathy what benefit do think he got from it? “it also means no withdrawal periods for milk and meat while the animal is being treated, as would be the case when antibiotics are used.” So this sort of data would not be observational, they should have figures that show when a cow is withdrawn for periods while on anti biotics. Now as there are possibly hundreds of cows in Steves herd and he has only been using homeoptahy for 18 months these numbers would give you some idea as to wether the treatment used has been effective, also this is one herd of 4 so comparing to the other herds would be interesting. as an answer to your law post if the owner of the animals is giving medicine that can be bought without a vets prescription then they are not breaking the law. Reply
“Through the collective experiences of Soil Association affiliated farmers, we have found that many routine problems can be treated with homeopathic and herbal medicines without any compromise to animal welfare.” I really like this statement, through collective experience, that could mean hundreds of farmers and tens of thousands of cattle. Though we all know how gullible farmers are eh! Zeno knows best. Reply
@Fed Up In an earlier comment you said “Where is your proof this statement is fact?” yet now you are automatically making the assumption (without proof) that ‘collective experience’ means a large number and that this somehow gives the argument strenght …… It could also mean very few farmers! And again, if all these farmers have done a course in homeopathy then these observational results are just their ‘opinion’ and therfore subject to bias. If a homeopath administers a homeopathic remedy expecting to see a particular effect ……. it’s no surprise that they then think they observe it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a single farmer or a ‘collective’ – collective bias isn’t any more acceptable as proof than the bias of an individual! Reply
SB I did say “could” and I have posted another post in response to yours but it hasn’t come up, must be in the spam bin. But again, are these results observational, please put my other post up Zeno, Reply
Fed up I can’t see any reason why they were spammed, but your post was buried on page 9 of today’s spam. Reply
Hey you know fed up, leave these guys alone, if they don’t want to eat organic that’s the greatest natural selection experiment, same with that pussy cat thing, let them eat crap, vaccine up to the hilt and the world will be better off without them. It’s a great laugh posting here, you can say what you like, they write the greatest shit anywhere. Their heros are the ERnsty Singh thang, what a bunch of geeks. How boring waiting for post for complaints feedback. Reply
Saw this story just before Christmas I think, and reluctantly gave up eating Yeo Valley yoghurts too. They were good, but it’s a very simple thing to make a shopping change! Reply
I have great faith in the ability of placebo triggers (such as homeopathy and prayer) to treat vague maladies (especially those which defy modern medicine) in people able to bring themselves to believe in such approaches. I also believe that animals such as cows are as suggestible as humans in this regard. But unless ‘Steve’ is able to persuade the cows that the sugar pill he feeds them is ‘medicine’, it seems unlikely that they would respond in any way. Nevertheless, if I chose to imbibe the udder juice of any other species i think I would prefer that those secretions were adulterated with sugar pills rather than some antibiotic chemical. But like all humans with half a heart I do not sanction the captivity of cows and the crating of calves which is necessary to procure a supply of milk for human consumption. So I hope your vendetta dissuades people from using yoghurt, which anyway has no value to humans other than as a topical treatment for thrush. Reply
I just ate some yeo valley yoghurt today. The message about the homeopathic treatment was on the inside of the carton. I can have no faith in a company that thinks that homeopathy makes sense. I won’t eat their yoghurt or udder products ever again. Seriously. I intend to take the other pot i have in the fridge back to sainsbury’s and ask for a refund as the homeopathic treatment was not listed on the outside of the packet. Whatever homeopathic remedy was given to the cow will have been diluted even further and be that much more potent, yet it is not even listed on the ingredients. why wouldn’t they list this if they believe. You can’t have it both ways. Reply
The initial link now redirects to the homepage, but if you search their site for homeopathic you can find that article still online here: http://www.yeovalleyorganic.co.uk/2011/10/07/alternative-treatments-for-our-cows Reply
Just so happens… I had a similar exchange with YeoValley around the same time. This is what I emailed them on 27/03/2011: I like your yoghurt products. But I have just decided that my family is going to boycott your products. Why? Because I’ve read on the inside of one of your yoghurt pot sleeves that you believe in homeopathy. Please… All that idyllic green family business stuff, the beautiful valley in the heart of Somerset, all of that is done to nought by that single word “homeopathic”. I’m entirely sympatethic to green values. But homeopathy? Sorry, that’s in the same category as witchcraft… In response, I got the exact same blurb from Sally that I read above. A few months later, I noticed that all references to homeopathy have been removed from their yoghurt pots. Reply
That’s interesting, Jan. I’ve not looked at their yoghurt pots since, but I’ll check them the next time I’m in a supermarket. Reply
I find it really disappointed that there is so much negative time spent on this topic. Why not con concentrate on the appalling conditions of most factory farms where antibiotic use is rife and animal welfare is non existent. Instead you write articles trying to put consumers off buying from one of the most ethical dairies around. Having grown up around farms I can assure you that most standard dairies aren’t using much science either – cows are routinely not treated because vet bills are too high, calves are shot at birth because they have no value and out of a herd of 100 cows there will be 70 cases of mastitis in any one year because of high grain diets and a drive for larger and larger yields. Please get your priorities in order. Reply
@Nicola I consider animals being given sugar pills when they might need proper treatment to be unethical. You seem to be concerned about animal welfare too. My priorities are doing something about the things I know about and can do something about: you seem to know a lot about antibiotic use on farms and animal welfare. What are you doing about improving animal welfare? Reply
I donate monthly to compassion in world farming I am a member of Ethical Consumer (Yeo value is one of the top scoring dairies) I am a member of the Green Party (which has the highest animal welfare policies for farmed animals) and campaigned with them on these issues. I write regularly to MPs / EU about animal welfare issues and have just published a petition on change.org about the negative impact of factory farming including zero grazing farms. I try only to consume animal products which have been produced to soil association standards as they have the highest animal welfare standards of all organic certificates ( – check compassion in world farming) I don’t want to argue with you but unless your readers choose to buy from another soil association organic dairy farmer they will be guaranteed to be buying milk from cows kept to much, much lower welfare standards. I really do know what I’m talking about and really want to wake people up to the realities of modern farming – it isn’t the marketing pictures you see on the packaging. Reply
I’m sure we’d disagree on organic and the Soil Association’s poor standards: why do you seem to consider giving animals something that isn’t a medicine when they might have a medical condition to be ethical? Reply