Homeopathy is no cure for mastitis

every teat before applying the cups, this was because I had only 50 cows and had the time. Our milk did not go through all the processes common in modern milk factories. So if I milked a cow with mastitis, my family and I would be drinking it.

But the only time there would be pus in milk is if a farmer neglected a cow with mastitis for an extended period and still milked her. That is a scenario that simply does not happen.

There is also a routine milk test to detect mastitis – the somatic cell count (SCC). A somatic cell is an antibody cell. If the milk has high levels of somatic cells it means the body has sent antibodies to the udder to fight an infection.

Milk factories do this test regularly and individual cow testing is done too. So most farmers will have a record of each cow’s SCC.

There are two approaches to dealing with mastitis – the conventional and the organic.

There is a trade-off here; your preferred method will depend on what is more important to you.

The conventional approach is to treat the cow with an antibiotic. About 5 millilitres of antibiotic is inserted up the teat canal for three consecutive days.

The milk will be withheld for five days after the last treatment.

After this time all traces of antibiotics are gone from the milk. The cure rate is about 80 per cent and assuming the cow is cured, her milk will go back into the vat.

If you think that antibiotic use is safe and modern testing ensures there is no residue in the milk, this option is for you.

New Zealand has the third lowest agricultural antibiotic use in the world at 20 milligrams per kilogram. New Zealand veterinarians are very strict in this regard. As a comparison, the United States use 180mg/kg and I have no idea what they are doing in Cyprus but their rate is 425mg/kg.

Organic certification does not allow the use of antibiotics. So organic farmers rely on homeopathic remedies to treat mastitis. If these remedies don’t work, organic farmers will treat the cow with antibiotics. But the cow will lose her organic status for a year and she has to leave the farm. In short, that means organic cows with mastitis are treated with antibiotics and in many cases culled.

I have been around the traps for a while now and I know how the sausage is made. It is at great risk to my personal brand that I say this but homeopathic remedies just don’t work.

This will make some people very angry but the research is clear. A Canadian study reviewed all data from 1970 and concluded: ‘‘No evidence-based recommendations could be given for the use of an alternative or non-antimicrobial conventional treatment for clinical mastitis’’. They went on: ‘‘We concluded that homeopathic treatments are not efficient for management of clinical mastitis’’. Another study found: ‘‘Virtually no data are available that support the clinical efficacy of any of the alternative veterinary products used for treatment or prevention of mastitis’’.

I am open to correction if anyone has alternative facts.

Culling mastitis cows may not be such a bad thing though – unless you are a cow. But it means farmers do not breed from cows that contract mastitis and over time the herd should be more resistant to mastitis.

But the data does not support this either and organic herds have roughly the same mastitis rates as conventional herds.

If you think antibiotic use is not safe, the organic approach is for you. But the trade-off is that more cows will take a one-way truck ride. But again the data does not support that: Culling rates for both conventional and organic farms are about the same.

While organic and conventional farms approach mastitis differently, infection rates are similar in both systems and cull rates are about the same too.

The data suggests they are more alike than they may think.