Revitalization of Rivers in India Draft Policy - Isha Guru Jaggi Vasudev

Revitalization of Rivers In India
Draft Policy Recommendation
• It is important to train people who are interested in native livestock.
• To reduce inbreeding in a small population, it may be desirable that individual
farmers become organized in associations to control the breeding of the
animals.
• Such associations which maintain the same pure breed need to appeal to public
opinion to obtain appropriate subsidies for production along with programs of
conservation.
7. ETHNOVETERINARY MEDICINE FOR LIVESTOCK HEALTH CARE
Man has no power of altering the absolute conditions of life; he cannot change the
climate of any country. He adds no new element to the soil but he can remove an
animal or plant from one climate or soil to another, and give it food on which it
did not subsist in its natural state. From a remote period, in all parts of the world,
man has subjected many animals and plants to domestication or culture.
Domesticated livestock have been contributing to food and agriculture for more
than ten millennia, providing meat, milk products, eggs, fibre, manure for crops,
fuel and draught power. As of today it is estimated that, directly and indirectly,
domestic animals supply one third of total human requirements for food and
agriculture and also reduce farmers’ exposure to risk and generate employment.
Globally, the resource-poor rural farmers rely on ancestral folk herbal knowledge
to deal with the diseases of their livestock and poultry. Veterinarians show
considerable interest in the medicinal plants employed in traditional systems.
Qualified veterinary physicians around the world require orientation on the
traditional folk veterinary medicine systems.
This emerging trend in favour of herbal medicine is partly due to the issues
related to the antimicrobial drug resistance and drug residues in foods (milk/
meat/eggs) of animal origin. Farmers having either one or two cattle, goats,
sheep or chicken need affordable access to primary veterinary healthcare at the
earliest. These scattered livestock holdings provide subsistent income for landless
labourers, especially farmwomen even in drought conditions. Commercialization
of these components of animal husbandry could undermine this important
income generation source of the rural poor.
Annexures
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