Contribution to IFOAM conference of Organic Animal Husbandry Alliance
Is Organic Animal Husbandry the role model for the future of Livestock? This was the questoin discussed during the IFOAM Animal Husbandry Alliance conference held at FIBL in Switzerland, between 28-30 April 2026. Around 200 participants from 40 countries participated. NLF participated in the event, especially contributing to the special sessions on Ethno Veterinary Practices for Livestock health, and on Animal Wellbeing
Please find the Proceedings of the conference
Outcome workshop Ethno veterinary practices
In the EVP workshop there were 5 presentations, 4 of which came from India - including:
- Baldomero Molina (Latin America) – RIEV
- Balakrishnan Nair et al (India) – EVP as alternative approach
- Devi (India) – EVP in nomadic Gaddi Shepherds
- Muherjee (India) – Herbal therapies for mastitis in dairy cattle
- Singh (India) – EVP to control udder infections in buffalo
Conclusions of the workshop:
Overarching challenges:
- Safeguarding ethnoveterinary knowledge: addressing the ongoing erosion and marginalization of ethnoveterinary knowledge, ensuring its preservation, recognition, and continued transmission to future generations.
- Bridging ethnoveterinary and scientific approaches: overcoming the currently limited integration between traditional knowledge and science through validation and research, making ethnoveterinary practices more evidence-based and competitive with xenobiotics
Main action neede to overcome challenges:
- Protection and preservation of ethnoveterinary knowledge: safeguarding resources, intellectual property, and the in situ and ex situ conservation of medicinal plants.
- Strengthening research, education, and knowledge transfer: promoting participatory research, involving all stakeholder groups, and supporting young people
- Expanding networks and policy recognition: strengthening local and global networks to learn from each other, disseminate and adapt knowledge to local circumstances, while avoiding commercialization, and integrating ethnoveterinary knowledge into agricultural, veterinary, and One Health policy frameworks.
How can organic agriculture be a role model in this regard?
- solutions based on local solutions (make them available, raise awareness, commercialisation only at a low and local level)
- Promoting the holistic approach of ethnoveterinary for animal health and welfare including prevention, early detection and treatment of diseases.
- Leveraging ethnoveterinary knowledge as an entry point to ogranic livestock production (for all kind of livestock holders, e.g. at a small holder level esp. in developing countries)
See here the full report of the workshop
NLF Netherlands merges with Caring Vets & Farmers
NLF Netherlands has decided to merge with Carin Vets and Caring Farmers, both members of the Caring Movement in the Netherlands. This powerful organization brings together not only farmers and veterinarians, but also doctors, chefs and teachers - thus forming a strong coalition towards a Planetary and Animal Friendly Food System. Caring Farmers was initiated in 2019 - see this interview
For more info on the aim and objectives of the Caring Movement see this film (in Dutch). NLF Netherlands will support Caring Vets in setting up the farm animal sector, and also strengthen the collaboration with Caring Farmers in the country. Caring vets and Caring Farmers will be representing NLF Netherlands within our international NLF network.
Over the past 6 years NLF Netherlands (or Platform Natuurlijke Veehouderij) has promoted nature-based livestock keeping, by providing capacity building for veterinarians and farmers related to effective use of herbs, especially in the intensive dairy sector. This included especially a focus on changing mono-culture grassland into herb-rich pastures. Moreover, the focus was on safe use of herbal products as available in the Dutch market. Besides farmers and veterinarians trained wihtin a Natural Milking project funded by RVO/Ministry of Agriculture, this contributed to the growing movement which has resulted in over 10.000 hectares of herb-rich grassland for dairy cattle.
Moreover, 8 'Stable Books' on safe use of herbal products in 8 livestock species were published, elaborated by Maria Groot by Wageningen Food Safety Research, of Wageningen University.
Professor Punniamurthy honored for contribution to Indian society through Ethno Veterinary Medicine
In February 2026 Professor Punniamurthy received the Padma Award 2026 for his outstanding work on ethno veterinary practices. This work, which was done largely together with Dr. Nair at Trans Disciplinary University as well as many other colleagues, has resulted in exceptionally effective herbal recipes for cntrolling health of livestock. The Padma Awards represent the highest civilian honors in India, acknowleding the work of national merit and grassroot innovation. See this video with an explantation of Prof. Punniamurthy
Our work as Natural Livestock Farming builds on Ethno Veterinary Medicine as one of the layers of our NLF 5-layer strategy. In India the herbal recipes for 29 nmost important livestock ailments have been adopted by the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). According the NDDB statistics the effect in over 1 million cases of livestock disease is recoirded as 80% - see overview below. As NLF we aim to bring this expertise to farmers in Africa a, adapted to the circumstances and locally available herbal resources.
First Natural Livestock Farming course at Dutch Veterinary University
Natural Livestock Farming. That's the name of a brand new elective course that master's students in veterinary medicine can take from this semester. This week they visited farmer Jan Dirk van der Voort of Remeker, among others.
"The course was full of enthusiastic students in no time," says assistant professor David Speksnijder. "We introduce master's students to developments in livestock farming that is committed to more circular agriculture. This includes more use of home-grown feed and residual flows and less use of synthetic (veterinary) products. We explicitly discuss how the role of the future farm animal veterinarian could change as a result of this and provide the students with tools with which they can continue to be a good sparring partner for livestock farmers on these themes later on."
The students will receive lectures from experts from within and outside the faculty and will visit companies that work according to other principles, such as farmers who pay extra attention to soil health through participation in projects of Wij.Land or livestock farmers who are experimenting with Agroforestry. Of course, they also receive practicals at the Tolakker educational farm. For example, they go out into the meadow to see which herbs grow there and what possible effects they have on both soil and animal health.
Based on Linked-in post of Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Utrecht
Natural Livestock Farming contribution to Agro Ecology
Natural Livestock Farming can provide an important contribution to the global Agro Ecology movement. This became clear during the 2nd East Africa Agro Ecology conference in Nairobi, In collaboration with Dr. Nehemiah Mehindo EIPMA we presented two PP presentations during the conference, and did succesful demonstration with farmers andconference participants: on the NLF Wheel of Livestock Health, and on Herbal Remedies for Mastitis and Foot & Mouth Disease. For full report look here
Our practical contribution to address AMR
Between 18 and 14 November the World Awareness Week on Antimicrobial Resistance will be spreading the word about AMR. Many international organizations are participating and the call is: Educate. Activite. Act Now.
There will be many activities, like for example this webinar of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on Wednesday November 20 entitled: Prevention is our Best Bet against AMR. You can also check more interesting documents of on AMR through this link.
As Natural Livestock Farming Foundation we contribute in a very practical way: supporting farmers and veterinarians to keep livestock healthy with minimal use of antibiotics and other chemicals. We Educate farmers and veterinarians, Advocate for preventive measures to control livestock disease by applying the NLF 5-layer approach including the use of herbs, and Act now by validating and promoting this very effective bottom-up approach at international level.
More details in the full policy brief published by Trans Disciplinary University (TDU) in India, below or through this link
Ethno Veterinary Practices: in Indian Standard Veterinary Treatment Guidelines!
Today's Indian national Newspaper the Hindu published an article on the inclusion of Ethno Veterinary Practices into the Indian Standard Veterinary Treatment Guidelines by the Ministry of Animal Husbandry. This is the impressive result of the continuous efforts of our Indian partners, colleagues and friends from Trans Disciplinary University (TDU) and NLF in India, with special emphasis on Dr. Nair and Professor Punniamurthy. Their continuous and innovative work to document and validate traditional knowledge from farmers and healers, effectively combining it with Ayurveda and western veterinary science, is bearing more fruit every day!
Due to the large-scale inclusion of the tested herbal treatments into the promotion by the National Dairy Development Board it became possible to successfully validate the curative effect with over half a million cases of dairy cattle and buffalo affected by 24 common diseases. The outcome was overwhelming and convincing: 81,4 average cure rate! Moreover the positive effect extended to dairy production, farm income and milk quality. These and other positive outcomes of Ethno Veterinary Practices have resulted in this long-awaited inclusion into formal Indian government guidelines. Now we will work together to further amplify this experience into our global Natural Livestock Farming network!
Verified milk quality improvement through NLF approach
In the NWO ARF project: Healthy Cows – Healthy Food – Healthy Environment: Enhancing safety and quality of milk in Ethiopia the NLF 5-layer approach was piloted with 60 farmers in the community of Debre Zeit, Ethiopia. In this project, after an initial inventory of the main problems in cow and calf health, interventions were done consisting of training in cow and calf management, as well as the use of herbs for controling diseases (ethno veterinary medicine). The project was funded by the Applied Research Project of NWO
Importantly, this project also included training the personnel of the VDFACA state veterinary laboratory in Addis Ababa in milk quality testing techniques. The training took place in Wageningen at RIKILT (now Wageningen Food Safety Research) between October 28 - November 3, 2018 in the Netherlands. The training was very successful and the laboratory personnel proved to be able to do sampling and analysing milk in Ethiopia.
At field level the outcomes of the project included:
- 20% reductoin of cattle health costs
- 50% incresed milk quantity
- 60% reduced calf mortality
The laboratory studies based on the milk produced by the farmers also revealed improved milk quality:
- Reduced levels of use antibiotic residues (8%)
- Reduced levels of pathogen microbes (E-Coli 50% and Staphylocossus Aureus 30%)
- Improved levels of fat and protein, lactose, solid-non fat and density of milk
Please find here the PP with a project overview + milk quality improvements analysed, as presented by Maria Groot (WFSR) and Belachew Tefera (VDFACA) in 2021
And here you can find the PDF of the article in word, entitled: Milk quality improvement through training and interventions: Experience sharing from NWO-ARF project
Scientific and Practical Validation of Ethnoveterinary Medicine
Ethnoveterinary Medicine is quickly gaining ground within India and elsewhere. This PP presents an overview of the Ethno Veterinary Practices, and the existing evidence according to farmers’ practice, Western science and traditional Indian sciences, including Ayurveda scientific background. It is brought together by Dr Nair and colleagues from Trans Disciplinary University in Bangelore, together with partners from GLOHMSIWA, NDDB, Milkunions, Indian Veterinary Assiciation and NLF.
Here is the link Highly recommended!
Book Ethnoveterinary Medicine 2020
Going though old e-mails I encountered this book again, entitled Ethnoveterinary Medicine: Present and Future Concepts (Springer 2020) edited by Lindy McGaw and Muna Ali Abdalla from Pretoria University, South Africa. The link provides the entry to the whole book. The book can be ordered here
This important book contains three major parts, with a total of 17 case studies:
PART 1: Role of Natural Products and Remedies in Treating Animal Diseases
PART 2: Sociological Aspects and Considerations Relating to Documentation of Ethnoveterinary Medicine
PART 3: Ethnoveterinary Medicine Around the World
Each of the case studies presented in this book contains important insights and practices from different parts of the world. As you may know, Ethnoveterinary Medicine is one of the main topics that Natural Livestock Farming 5-layer strategy builds on. Highly recommended!
CONTENT
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Muna Ali Abdalla and Lyndy J. McGaw
Part I The Role of Natural Products and Remedies in Treating Animal
Diseases
2 The Pharmacological and Nutritional Significance of Plant-Derived
Natural Products: An Alternative for Animal Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Muna Ali Abdalla and Lyndy J. McGaw
3 Alternative Antimicrobials: Medicinal Plants and
Their Influences on Animal Infectious Diseases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Shanoo Suroowan and M. Fawzi Mahomoodally
4 Ethnoremedies Used for Horses in British Columbia
and Trinidad and Tobago . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Cheryl Lans, Candice Sant, and Karla Georges
5 Plants for Controlling Parasites in Goats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Irene R. Mazhangara, Marcia Sanhokwe, Eliton Chivandi,
John F. Mupangwa, José M. Lorenzo, and Voster Muchenje
6 Ethnoveterinary Practices for Control of Ticks in Africa . . . . . . . . . . 99
Felix Nchu, Paulin Nana, George Msalya, and Solomon R. Magano
Part II Sociological Aspects and Considerations Relating
to Documentation of Ethnoveterinary Medicine
7 Gender Aspects and Multiple Contexts in Ethnoveterinary
Practice and Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Tedje van Asseldonk and Cheryl Lans
viii
8 Toward a Better Understanding of African Ethnoveterinary
Medicine and Husbandry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Alberto Zorloni
Part III Ethnoveterinary Medicine Around the World
9 Ethnoveterinary Medicine and Medicinal Plants Used
in the Treatment of Livestock Diseases in Cameroon . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Jean Paul Dzoyem, Roland T. Tchuenteu, Kofia Mbarawa,
Awung Keza, Akah Roland, Abdel Jelil Njouendou,
and Jules Clement N. Assob
10 Ethnoveterinary Medicinal Plants Used in South Africa . . . . . . . . . . 211
E. Thato Khunoana and Lyndy J. McGaw
11 Ethnoveterinary Plants and Practices for the Control of Ticks
and Tick-Borne Diseases in South Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Olubukola T. Adenubi, Muna Ali Abdalla, and Lyndy J. McGaw
12 Ethnoveterinary Medicine: A Zimbabwean Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Prosper Jambwa and Emmanuel Tendai Nyahangare
13 Ethnoveterinary Practices in the Maghreb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Irene Teixidor-Toneu, Abdeddaim Elhajjam, and Ugo D’Ambrosio
14 Natural Remedies for Animal Health in Latin America . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Anna Karolina Martins Borges, Raynner Rilke Duarte Barboza,
Wedson Medeiros Silva Souto, and Rômulo Romeu Nóbrega Alves
15 Local Practice of Cattle Farming and Ethnoveterinary
Medicine in Estonia: Case Study of Saaremaa and Muhumaa . . . . . 345
Raivo Kalle and Marko Kass
16 Belarusian Ethnoveterinary Medicine: Ritual Practices
and Traditional Remedies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Aliaksandra Shrubok
17 The Use of Plants for Animal Health Care in the Spanish
Inventory of Traditional Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
José Antonio González, Alonso Verde,
and Manuel Pardo-de-Santayana