‘Eye on immense potential’, Uttarakhand plans to distil Badri cow urine, sell it to pharma firms
The Uttarakhand animal husbandry department will establish a unit to distil urine of Badri cows, an indigenous breed, at Nariyal village in Champawat district, and supply it to ayurvedic and pharma companies for medicinal purposes
The Uttarakhand animal husbandry department will establish a unit to distil urine of Badri cows, an indigenous breed, at Nariyal village in Champawat district, and supply it to ayurvedic and pharma companies for medicinal purposes, officials said.
Nearly 300 litre cow urine of other breeds is now supplied every month to Patanjali in Haridwar at the rate of Rs 25 per litre.
Badri cows became the state’s first cattle breed to get certified by the National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources, Karnal. Present chief minister TS Rawat had named the local cow breed as Badri in 2011 when he was the agriculture minister.
In 2012, a cattle breeding centre was opened at Nariyal village, which houses about 150 cows, for preservation of the native breed.
“The milk of Badri cow has high nutritious value; its urine too holds the key to various health problems. Keeping this in mind, we will establish a unit for distilling the cow’s urine, which could be supplied to ayurvedic and other pharma companies,” said animal husbandry department director SS Bisht.
Badri cows give high-quality milk as they feed on herbs and shrubs. Like sheep and goats, these cows graze on steep slopes and have access to better- quality grass and plants. This is not the case with other cow breeds.
Other breeds like Red Sindhi are reared in Kalsi in Dehradun district, and their urine is supplied to FMCG group Patanjali, which, officials said, is the only establishment that buys cow urine from Uttarakhand.
Officials said 200 Badri cows will be kept at the new unit at Nariyal to distil their urine. Experts claim cow urine helps in the treatment of disorders caused by bacteria, virus and fungi.
“There’s immense potential in Badri cow urine. In Nagpur (Maharashtra), licences are given to people for collection (of cow urine). If the Uttarakhand government is planning this, it will give boost to the conservation and rearing of the breed here,” said Avadhesh Kumar, head of the department of veterinary & animal husbandry extension education, college of veterinary and animal science at Govind Ballabh Pant University in Pantnagar.
A research conducted by the Uttarakhand State Council for Science and Technology and the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee has established that the milk of the cow contains A2 genotype beta casein, which is used for the treatment of diabetes and heart ailments.
The animal husbandry department has adopted the Badri breed cow as its logo, which is likely to be inaugurated by the CM on January 19.