The Organic Consumers Association teams up with the NCH to combat unfair press about homeopathy....

Alexandria, VA
06/18/2008

One of the newer efforts of the NCH is teaming up with like-minded organizations.  In 2008, a wonderful alliance was formed with the Organic Consumers Association, a grassroots non-profit public interest organization campaigning for health, justice, and sustainability. The OCA deals with crucial issues of food safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, children's health, corporate accountability, Fair Trade, environmental sustainability and other key topics. They represent over 850,000 members, subscribers and volunteers, including several thousand businesses in the natural foods and organic marketplace.

In response to a recent hit-piece about homeopathy published in Consumer Reports that was full of misrepresentations and false information (remember this the next time you trust their information!), the OCA sent out the following action alert to its membership:

ALERT: MAINSTREAM MEDIA ATTEMPTS TO BURY HOMEOPATHY
Consumer Reports journalist, Doug Podolsky, took a stab at homeopathy in the recent issue of Consumer Reports. Despite over two-hundred years of successful use for a variety of ailments, homeopathy is quackery, according to Podolsky who writes, "Check whether over-the-counter products are labeled homeopathic. If they are, we think you should put them back on the shelf."  Podolsky's Consumer Reports piece references a 2005 study indicating homeopathy is ineffective, but he fails to mention the study has since been debunked.Unfortunately, due to the prestige of Consumer Reports, the article has already gone viral, as marketing firms and pharmaceutical companies spread it far and wide in an attempt to snuff competition from the natural health world.
Learn more and take action: click on this link.

Thank you OCA!

As a result, readers sent over 4,000 letters to Consumer Reports, hoping the publication would take a second look at the validity of homeopathics. Consumers Union, a nonprofit overseeing the Consumer Reports publication, is a longtime close ally of the OCA, and they have indicated they will be investigating further scientific studies on the matter.

Ironically, this same Consumer Reports editor, Doug Podolsky has written in the past about the contamination of our nation's poultry with drug-resistant bacteria.  The culprit is overuse of antibiotics on poultry and other factory farms.  Too bad Doug doesn't think people should use homeopathy!  He'd find out that organic farms, as well as large factory farms in Europe, have been successfully using homeopathic remedies to control animal disease for years.

In fact, a 1999 German study found that homeopathic treatment was more effective than the prophylactic doses of antibiotics normally used by large pig farms. [Albrecht, H., and A. Schutte, “Homeopathy Versus Antibiotics in Metaphylaxis of Infectious Diseases: A Clinical Study in Pig Fattening and Its Significance to Consumers,”  Alternative Therapies, Volume 5, Number 5, pp. 64–68 (September 1999)].