Circum-Mediterranean cultural heritage and medicinal plant uses in traditional animal healthcare: a field survey in eight selected areas within the RUBIA project

Abstract

During the years 2003-2005, a comparative ethnobotanical field survey was conducted on remedies used in traditional animal healthcare in eight Mediterranean areas. The study sites were selected within the EU-funded RUBIA project, and were as follows: the upper Kelmend Province of Albania; the Capannori area in Eastern Tuscany and the Bagnocavallo area of Romagna, Italy; Cercle de Ouezanne, Morocco; Sierra de Aracena y Picos de Aroche Natural Park in the province of Huelva, Spain; the St. Catherine area of the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt; Eastern and Western Crete, Greece; the Paphos and Larnaca areas of Cyprus; and the Mitidja area of Algeria. One hundred and thirty-six veterinary preparations and 110 plant taxa were recorded in the survey, with Asteraceae and Lamiaceae being the most quoted botanical families. For certain plant species the survey uncovered veterinary phytotherapeutical indications that were very uncommon, and to our knowledge never recorded before. These include Anabasis articulata (Chenopodiaceae), Cardopatium corymbosum (Asteraceae), Lilium martagon (Liliaceae), Dorycnium rectum (Fabaceae), Oenanthe pimpinelloides (Apiaceae), Origanum floribundum (Lamiaceae), Tuberaria lignosa (Cistaceae), and Dittrichia graveolens (Asteraceae). These phytotherapeutical indications are briefly discussed in this report, taking into account modern phytopharmacology and phytochemistry.The percentage of overall botanical veterinary taxa recorded in all the study areas was extremely low (8%), however when all taxa belonging to the same botanical genus are considered, this portion increases to 17%. Nevertheless, very few plant uses were found to be part of a presumed "Mediterranean" cultural heritage in veterinary practices, which raises critical questions about the concept of Mediterraneanism in ethnobotany and suggests that further discussion is required.Nearly the half of the recorded veterinary plant uses for mammals uncovered in this survey have also been recorded in the same areas in human folk medicine, suggesting a strong link between human and veterinary medical practices, and perhaps also suggesting the adaptive origins of a few medical practices. Since most of the recorded data concern remedies for treating cattle, sheep, goats, and camels, it would be interesting to test a few of the recorded phytotherapeuticals in the future, to see if they are indeed able to improve animal healthcare in breeding environments, or to raise the quality of dairy and meat products in the absence of classical, industrial, veterinary pharmaceuticals.

Treatment of Organic Livestock with Medicinal Plants: A Systematic Review of European Ethnoveterinary Research

“…The search terms were selected from keyword indices of major ethnomedicinal/botanical journals ( Journal of Ethnopharmacology , Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine ), matched with the Scopus search fields ‘abstract', ‘title', ‘keywords', and ‘text' (ethno* OR tradition* OR folk) AND (veterinar* OR animal OR livestock OR farm* OR sheep OR goat OR cattle OR cow OR pig OR calv* OR poultry) AND (plant OR herb* OR phyto*), and with each country of the EU, including candidate and affiliated countries (Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, United Kingdom). From this first search 8,822 titles were extracted, which were reduced to a final set of 75 publications [20,21,22,23,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,100,…”

“…Homemade herbal remedies, handed down over generations, may be a useful therapeutic alternative for treatment of livestock [9,22,26,27], in particular on certified organic farms [24,27,28]. Although there are reviews regarding ethnoveterinary medicine (EVM) from other parts of the world [20,29] and from European ethnomedicine [30], a comprehensive overview on EVM in Europe is still lacking.…”

“…According to McCorkle [19], ethnoveterinary research is ‘the systematic investigation and application of folk veterinary knowledge, theory and practice'. The traditional use of plants has been investigated in some parts of Europe [20,21,22,23,24,25]. Homemade herbal remedies, handed down over generations, may be a useful therapeutic alternative for treatment of livestock [9,22,26,27], in particular on certified organic farms [24,27,28].…”

Cross-Cultural Ethnobiology in the Western Balkans: Medical Ethnobotany and Ethnozoology Among Albanians and Serbs in the Pešter Plateau, Sandžak, South-Western Serbia

“…In Europe, only a limited number of cross-cultural comparative field studies or metaanalyses focused on such dynamics during modern times have so far addressed this question (Leporatti and Ivancheva 2003;Pieroni and Quave 2005;Pieroni et al 2006;Hadjichambis et al 2008;González-Tejero et al 2008;Leporatti and Ghedira 2009;Łuczaj 2008.…”

Medicinal Animals in Ethnoveterinary Practices: A World Overview

“…Studies focusing on EVM have only been undertaken relatively recently, dating principally from the 1980s (Mathias-Mundy and McCorkle 1989;McCorkle 1986), although increasing attention has been paid to ethnoveterinary knowledge and local veterinary (Akerreta et al 2010;Martin et al 2001) in recent years-and the numbers of EVM studies have increased dramatically (together with research examining the importance of plants in EVM) (Davis et al 1995;Dold and Cocks 2001;Lans 2007;Lans et al 2007a, b;Pieroni et al 2004Pieroni et al , 2006Viegi et al 2003). Nevertheless, a considerable proportion of the ethno knowledge and traditional animal health care practices in native and animal stock raising communities remain undocumented despite a growing tendency to integrate them into more widely used primary animal health care delivery systems in rural and peri-urban communities (Wanzala et al 2005).…”