Prince Charles Reveals That His Cows And Sheep Are Given Homeopathy, To Cut Down Antibiotic Use

independent.co.uk

Prince Charles was speaking at a summit on antibiotic resistance at The Royal Society in London, where he said that the matter was of ¡°long-standing and acute concern,¡± to him.

"It was one of the reasons I converted my farming operation to an organic, or agro-ecological, system over 30 years ago, and why incidentally we have been successfully using homeopathic - yes, homeopathic - treatments for my cattle and sheep as part of a programme to reduce the use of antibiotics,¡± he reveals.

Understanding antibiotic resistance.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of antibiotic resistance, it is the result of antibiotic overuse. Antibiotics are medicines that we take to fight bacterial infections because antibiotics have the power to kill bacteria. However, when we misuse them by taking them too often, taking the wrong medication, taking the wrong dosage or taking them for the wrong time period, the harmful bacteria become resistant to them. This is dangerous, because it means that the medicines we have will no longer work against diseases, and the most common illnesses will become life-threatening killers.

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You¡¯re probably wondering how animals come into all this. As it turns out, animal-rearing companies, both in India and abroad, are feeding animals a number of antibiotics from the day they are born. The sheep, cows, goats, pigs and chickens are the companies' investments, and the last thing they want is for those investments to fall sick and die. Hence, the antibiotics.

"This practice could, as some have pointed out, be described as a cheap form of insurance," said Prince Charles.

The antibiotics that are fed to animals promote antibiotic resistance and make way for the creation of harmful bacteria that our medicines are powerless to fight.

Prince Charles has long been a proponent of homeopathy.

The Prince of Wales has been a long-time supporter of homeopathy, and has even been lobbying to incorporate it into the UK¡¯s National Health Services (NHS), which is the country¡¯s healthcare system where every British citizen can avail of free treatment.

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"I find it difficult to understand how we can continue to allow most of the antibiotics in farming, many of which are also used in human medicine, to be administered to healthy animals,¡± he said.

"Could we not devise more effective systems where we reserve antibiotics for treating animals where the use is fully justified by the seriousness of the illness?

"Would we, I wonder, advise adding antibiotics to our own food or water on a daily basis, just in case we became ill?

"Antibiotics have too often simply acted as a substitute for basic hygiene, or as it would seem, as a way of placating a patient who has a viral infection or who actually needs little more than patience to allow a minor bacterial infection to resolve itself."

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that antibiotic resistance is becoming a major problem around the world, as doctors are prescribing them freely and people are popping them for even colds, not knowing that colds are viral infections and antibiotics only kill bacteria, and not viruses.

Cover image via nytimes.com