Botanicals in pork production• Some consumers are interested in buying meat from animals that

were not fed antibiotics, antibacterials or antimicrobials.• Health problems occur with use of antibiotics in livestock

production because microbes become resistant to the same antibiotics used in human health.

• Holden at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University compared three botanicals to the feed additive Mecadox.

• The three botanicals were peppermint, echinacea and garlic.• The measurements used to compare performance were average

daily gain, feed efficiency, mortality, general visual health, standard carcass evaluation and sensory tests for tenderness, juiciness and flavour of the pork.

Botanical trial: peppermint• 20 pens of 5 pigs each. 4 replications of 5 dietary treatments.• 50 g/ton Mecadox was the positive control• The negative control diet had no antibacterial inclusions.• Peppermint has volatile oil which contain medicinal properties. Peppermint

contains menthol with carminative properties (relieving intestinal gas). Menthol also has antispasmodic and choleretic properties (relieve abdominal pain). Peppermint is used traditionally for common colds and may have antiviral activity. Peppermint also shows antimicrobial activity against Streptococcus pyogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Candida albicans.

• Peppermint (Mentha piperita), the tested substance was included at level (0, 0.5, 2.5 and 5.0 %). Peppermint showed no advantage. The -.5 and 2.5% levels were better than the 5.0% and the negative control.

• Peppermint (Mentha piperita) was included in a second experiment at lower levels (0, 0.5 and 1.0%). The pigs fed peppermint did less well than the pigs on Mecadox. They grew slower, ate less. Peppermint had no negative effect on feed efficiency.

Botanical trial: garlic• Garlic (Allium sativum) is used worldwide for medicinal purposes. • Garlic bulbs contain a volatile oil consisting of allicin, diallyl disulfide and dially

trisulfide. Garlic shows broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity against main bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi.

• Including garlic at 0.0, 0.5, 2.5 and 5% levels versus Mecadox depressed feed intake and average daily gain and depressed performance. Muscle samples from the garlic-fed pigs contained “very objectionable” off-flavours.

• Second experiment used 0.0, 0.10, 0.25 and 0.5% garlic. • 20 pens of 6 pigs each. 4 replications of 5 dietary treatments. Garlic was not

better than the negative control and worse than Mecadox. Increasing levels of garlic reduced feed efficiency.

• Mixed reports on the off flavours

Mexico

Chiapas

Native sheep in Chiapas• Dramatic changes have been observed during the last 30 years

in the countryside of Mexico. • What we used to see as the romantic view of a smallholder

farmer caring for a bunch of cattle, sheep and goats is gone. • There are now specialised livestock operations that use high

technology and high external inputs. • At the same time, a different concept of animal husbandry

undertaken by Tzotzil shepherdesses shows that the old romantic ways can also be very efficient and productive.

• Despite considerable external pressure, Tzotzil women have preserved their local breeds of wool sheep at a time when global markets are shifting production goals into uniform, standardised outputs.

Sheep and syncretism• For more than 400 years the Tzotzil Maya Indians have inhabited

the highlands of Mexico's remote and southernmost state, Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala.

• The Tzotzil adopted sheep from the Spanish conquerors during the first half of the 16th century. Sheep reached Mexico in 1493 travelling as food-animals on Columbus’ second voyage. The Tzotzil breed is descended from the Spanish Churra, Manchega, Lacha and Castella breeds.

• Tzotzil women developed their own Chiapas breed of sheep, along with a unique husbandry system that allows these animals to survive in the difficult mountain environment.

• The Tzotzil system of ovine husbandry and health care is derived from ancient Mayan ethnomedicine and cosmology syncretized with Spanish Catholicism and with herding techniques learned from the early Spanish colonists.

Sheep syncretism• Prayers, votive candles and offerings to the patron saint of sheep or other ‘animal

saints’ are used in ethnoveterinary medicine.• Tzotzil weaving draws on ancient indigenous methods of native cotton

processing.• There are also ritual practices based on Mayan notions of animal souls. Good

and evil forces struggle over the soul of an animal and the emotional state of the owner can affect the health of her flock making them ‘sad’ and thus prone to illness.

• There are herbal medicines for supernatural conditions such as evil eye or unthriftiness (aire). Once a year on the day of the saint siad to have given sheep to Tzotzil, sheperdesses carry salt, coloured ribbons and a token lamb to church to be blessed. They also call on this saint to protect their flock throughout the year, intone the names of all the animals’ grazing grounds, watering spots, trails and each sheep’s personal names.

• The original Spanish tradition of large-scale transhumant pastoralism managed by men for meat production was transformed into a settled small-scale stockraising system managed by women.

• Chiapas is in the south of Mexico and is the poorest state. • The largest ethnic group in Chiapas is the Tzotzil who number about

200,000 people, living in scattered hamlets in the mountains. The Tzotzils are poor, but parts of their society and culture give them resilience and survivability.

• One of these aspects is the unique way in which the women in the villages care for their sheep, and their philosophy about these animals and their woolen souls. Sheep are believed to have souls and to experience human emotions such as happiness and sadness.

• Chiapas sheep have lower occurrences of certain illnesses such as fascioliasis, or liverfluke disease, compared to other sheep. This is because of the Tzotzil management system.

• Chiapas sheep have high milk production. Although their wool production is low by Western standards.

• More than 400 years of adaptation have made the sheep exceptionally hardy and disease resistant.

Improving the local breed• In the early 1970s, the coloured sheep in Chiapas caught the

attention of government officials. Chiapas had the highest density of sheep in the whole country.

• With good intentions, the extension service decided to ‘improve’ what they saw as a small and unproductive local sheep by means of crossbreeding with high-yielding exotic sheep breeds (Rambouillet rams). [This was called arrogant and reductionist and compared to bringing Aryan men as studs for Amerind women].

• This technical approach had been used in many other parts of central and northern Mexico with very good results, and most sheep farmers in those areas were able to ‘upgrade’ their local sheep. By the mid 1990s, the local breeds of sheep in these areas were gone, and thousands of black-faced crossbred sheep were producing large amounts of white and fine wool, with an important impact on the domestic economy.

Crossbreeding failures• In Chiapas, however, the crossbreeding programs were unsuccessful. The

rams died within weeks. To extension officers accused the villagers of eating them. Chiapas women do not kill sheep and did not want to cull their own animals that were considered to have poor genes.

• The foreign breeds failed to adapt to the local environment and the availability of native forages, and the animals died in a matter of weeks.

• The Tzotzil women did not like the fleeces of these exotic animals because they could not be processed into woollen garments using their traditional spinning and weaving techniques.

• The wool of what the women called “Mexican sheep” was too short, too fine, and too white, as compared with the fleeces of their batsi chij, their ‘true sheep’.

• Government officials always blamed the Tzotzil sheep farmers for the failures, and thought that they were doomed for keeping their small and unproductive sheep.

Why did cross breeding fail?• Top-down interventions did not consider the objectives, rationale,

logistics, and social implications of sheep within Tzotzil culture. • The government officials thought that sheep production was the same

all over Mexico, and they did not take the time or the interest to get to know the culture and the tradition of the local people, or the local husbandry systems and sheep breeds.

• They did not know that there were no shepherds, only women shepherdesses. They did not know that the exotic sheep breeds did not have a double-coated fleece like the local ‘true sheep’. The fleece of the high-yielding exotic sheep had short, fine and white wool fibres, very good for the mechanised textile industry, but wrong for hand-processing.

• In Chiapas the best fleeces have long and loose staples formed by long-coarse fibres with little or no kemp. Fleece colour is very important. All black, all white, or cinnamon brown fleeces reach the highest prices, because they are woven directly into clothes without requiring a time-consuming and complex dyeing process.

Wool and kemp• Most of the fiber from domestic sheep has two qualities that

distinguish it from hair or fur: it is scaled in such a way that helps the animal move out burrs and seeds that might embed themselves into its skin; and it is crimped, in some fleeces more than 20 bends per inch.

• Both the scaling and the crimp make it possible to spin and felt the fleece. They help the individual fibers "grab" each other so that they stay together. They also make the product retain heat, as they trap heat in their bends.

• Hair, by contrast, has little if any scale and no crimp and little ability to bind into yarn. On sheep, the hair part of the fleece is called kemp. The relative amounts of kemp to wool vary from breed to breed, and make some fleeces more desireable for spinning, felting or carding into batts for quilts or other insulating products. Wool straight off a sheep is highly water resistant. It is said to be "in the grease," the grease being lanolin, and can be worked into yarn and knit into water-resistant mittens.

Perezgrovas and young shepherdess

Impact of globalisation• In 1995, globalisation impacted sheep farming in Mexico. • A free trade agreement with New Zealand and Australia allowed

containers of live animals, frozen mutton, and greasy fleeces to be distributed all over Mexico.

• The price of mutton and greasy wool dropped, and Mexican sheep farmers could not able to compete.

• It was more expensive to shear the animals than to buy imported wool, and the farmers were forced to sell all their animals, to use their savings for subsistence, and to look for alternative sources of income. The number of people migrating to the United States increased drastically in a matter of months.

• In Chiapas nothing changed. The local breeds of sheep maintained their numbers, the cost of animals and fleeces remained very high, as did the contribution of sheep to the domestic economy, representing an average 36% of the annual income.

Beating globalisation in Chiapas• First of all, sheep are part of the culture of the Tzotzils; since they

are sacred animals protected by the local religion, it is forbidden to hurt, to kill or to eat them.

• Secondly, they are also the exclusive responsibility of women, who take every decision over any issue related to these animals and also keep and manage any money derived from their sheep.

• The Tzotzils believe that every person has an ‘animal companion’ who suffers the same fate as his or her soul mate. When a person is ill or dies so does his or her animal companion and this is the reason for not hurting or killing them.

• There are still 150,000 wool sheep kept in small flocks (of about 10 sheep) all over the mountains of Chiapas. The traditional sheep management system designed by the Tzotzil shepherdesses is efficient in terms of lamb and fleece production, it requires very little or no external inputs, and it keeps inbreeding at negligible levels.

Importance of wool to the local economy

• The importance of sheep is related to the traditional clothing of the Tzotzils.

• Clothes for ceremonial or daily use are made out of wool and any visitor to the villages or to the local markets will find men in their heavy black coats or their sleeveless white jackets.

• Women wear their black woollen skirts and their richly embroidered brown blouses, and they cover themselves with black shawls.

• Children’s clothes, blankets and bedspreads are woven to blend fleeces of different colours, to create an infinite number of grey and brown shades.

• These woollen clothes are quite heavy and a hairy finish is highly regarded; they are also waterproof and last a very long time: two or three years of daily use.

Sheep economics• Adequate amounts of high quality fleeces represent the

possibility to weave clothes for every member of the family. • Fleeces of such quality have a high value at the local markets,

which makes them a valuable asset in case of urgent cash needs. Families earn up to 40% of their annual income from sheep raising via an active trade in wool and woolen garments.

• Additional income is generated through the sales of surplus rams, old sheep, woollen garments and handicrafts, and surplus manure not used on the family land for crops.

• Sheep are rarely sold, and the Tzotzil religion prohibits the consumption of mutton.

• In contrast to sheep; cows, horses or pigs are just domestic animals for the Tzotzils, who raise them, kill them, eat them, or sell them as needed.

Chiapas sheep managementAn average family flock consists of 10 sheep: three rams and seven

ewes. Most of the animals are offspring of an initial pair of sheep given to a couple as a wedding gift. The Tzotzil sheep are grazed daily from about 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. They are tethered to a stake that is moved three or four times a day. During the rainy season, the sheep are grazed on communal pastures. In order to protect the maize crops that the flocks pass on the way to graze, each animal is muzzled with a handmade grass muzzle. During the dry season, sheep graze the harvested maize fields. Later in the season the flocks are moved to the forest to browse.

• At night the sheep are kept in wooden shelters within the family vegetable garden. The shelters are moved every six weeks to manure the soil. The flock is watered once or twice daily from buckets, almost on an individual basis. Once a week the animals are given local mountain salt and, when available, crop surpluses such as squash or potatoes left from a seed batch.

Liver fluke• Fascioliasis is common in the Chamuls region during the dry season.

It is caused by Fasciola hepatica, a leaf-shaped fluke. • The effects of fascioliasis depends on the number of parasites an

animal ingests. • With a heavy infection, sheep may die in six to eight weeks. • The parasite requires moisture and certain snail species for its

development. Adult flukes live and reproduce in the bile ducts of their vertebrate host. Their eggs are excreted in feces. The small larvae hatch from the eggs, then infect a snail host. The larvae leave the snail and encyst themselves on wet vegetation. Sheep become infected when they feed on the infested vegetation. Symptoms include swelling in the lower jaw and reduced lactation. The swelling results from pathological changes, such as disturbed circulation and/or depressed blood protein. Swelling of the lower jaw may also be due to other diseases, such as common stomach worms.

Liver fluke• Tzotzil shepherdesses refer to lower jaw swelling as 'water

necklace' and consider it a specific sheep disease rather than a non-specific symptom. They attribute it to the ingestion of various plants that grow near wells, rivers, meadows and maize fields. In particular, a small herbaceous species known in Tzotzil as "lake flower" and "sheep sorrel" (Rumex acetosella) are associated with the disease.

• According to the women, the second most common cause of 'water necklace' is sadness when the sheep feel that something is amiss. Sadness may be triggered by a husband and wife arguing, an owner thinking about selling his animals, or any other disturbance such as an inattentive shepherdess.

Folk remedies• The Tzotzil treat 'water necklace' with home remedies, prayers, and

rituals. The most popular therapy is drenching sheep for several days with an infusion of 13 sprigs of Espatorium ligustrinum. This shrub is commonly found in the highlands of Chiapas and is known for its anti-inflammatory properties.

• Another cure involves mixing three small cloves of garlic with homemade sugarcane alcohol, and administering this to the sheep orally once daily over several days. Shepherdesses say this preparation also relieves bloat. Following the same schedule, a mixture of salt and dried maize may be fed to ailing sheep. Another oral preparation given only once is 13 chili peppers blended with water. This remedy is used for liver illness in general.

• Because the Tzotzil believe that 'water necklace' may be caused by sadness, a ritual treatment may be called for. In one such ritual, the shepherdess leads the sick sheep to a trail crossing and requests the sadness to leave her sheep and depart down any of the trails.

Effective remedies?• The Tzotzil practice of muzzling sheep and container watering,

minimizes contact with aquatic plants and the moist areas where the snail hosts of F. hepatica flourish.

• Espatorium ligustrinum has anti-inflammatory properties and may reduce the ‘water bag’ or sub-mandibular oedema, but will not attack the root cause of fasciolosis.

• The regular cleaning and moving of shelters makes it difficult for the parasite to reach infective stages.

• The value of Tzotzil therapies is more difficult to assess. Certainly, the salt and maize feedings produce some nutritional benefits. The action of other ingredients in Tzotzil ethnoveterinary medicines is being evaluated.

Folk remedies• 1. Adiantum andicola• 2. Allium sativum• 3. Nicotiana tabacum• 4. Teloxys ambrosiodies• 5. Cucurbita maxima (Giant pumpkin) seeds• #s 4 and 5 were evaluated and found to reduce the faecal egg counts of

gastrointestinal nematodes and oocyts of Eimeria spp. Within a week of treatment. Parasites were never totally eliminated, but the treatments were practically free.

• The treatments were acceptable to shepherdesses who did not accept pills, tablets or injectable liquids

• The women suggested the plants to be evaluated and volunteered their own herds. They objected to taking faeces directly from the sheep at first but then allowed it. More and more women are asking to participate indicating that the research is effective and appropriate.