Cow Urine in Parliament: The Patents Don’t Say What the BJP MP Claimed

Do US patents really certify the medicinal value of cow urine? After a BJP MP invoked patent numbers on the floor of Parliament, Offbeat Concerns traced the documents and found that the evidence tells a different story. Science should not be replaced by political rhetoric.

On July 28, as Parliament debated the National Examination Reform and Paper Leak Prevention Bill, 2026, Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi questioned the composition of the Centre’s newly constituted education reform task force. Referring to one of its members, IIT Madras Director V. Kamakoti, as a ‘gaumutra visheshagya’ (cow urine expert), she criticised the government’s choice of experts and questioned what they knew about education. V. Kamakoti had previously found himself in a controversy in 2025 after publicly speaking about the purported antifungal and anti-inflammatory benefits of cow urine.

On July 31, the discussion on the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026, in Rajya Sabha took an unexpected turn when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Dr Sudhanshu Trivedi extended his support to V. Kamakoti. As a response to Priyanka Gandhi’s cow urine comment, the BJP MP stated on record that cow urine was patented in the US for its alleged ‘anti-bacterial’, ’anti-fungal ’ and  ‘medicinal value’. He mentioned the US patent numbers ‘6410059’ and ‘6896907’ to support his statement.

In this report, Offbeat Concerns delves into these two patents to present scientific facts and provide a clearer understanding of why the statement ‘Cow urine has medicinal properties’ is misleading.

Cow urine’s wild card entry in NEET discussion

During the debate in the Rajya Sabha on July 30, BJP MP Dr Sudhanshu Trivedi criticised the Congress for raising the issue of cow urine while discussing the National Examination Reform and Paper Leak Prevention Bill, 2026. The BJP MP stated that cow urine’s anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties and its reported role as a bio-enhancer have led it to be patented in the US and cited two United States patents, US Patent 6410059 and US Patent 6896907, claiming that they demonstrate the medicinal properties of cow urine.

Dr Sudhanshu Trivedi further accused the Opposition of being a slave to Western science, alleging that they, in the past, failed to acknowledge the importance of Indian culture in medicine, such as Ayurveda, and suggested that if the All India Institute of Ayurvedic Science had been established 50 years ago, it would have been instrumental in avoiding the struggle for patents on turmeric and neem.

The Press Trust of India (PTI) also shared a 1-minute-40-second-long visual taken from Sansad TV’s Rajya Sabha live dated July 30. The footage features Dr Sudhanshu Trivedi making the statement on cow urine.

Influential right-wing accounts such as @MeghUpdates also shared the video with a similar caption.

As of July 31, the post garnered 77,900 views, 6,100 likes and 1,500 reposts.

Responding to the post, a user stated, “India’s the only country in the world that is terribly agnostic about their past. It can never move on because its politicians don’t want to. They don’t want patents in other tech advancements; they always feel happy for what they have never done anything to achieve. Wake up.”

Although the BJP MP didn’t mention any UK patent in the Rajya Sabha statement, the viral captions claim that cow urine is also patented in the UK.

What do the patents actually say?

The two patents cited by Dr Trivedi are genuine and were granted to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). However, neither patent is titled or framed as establishing the medicinal properties of cow urine.

The patent US6410059B1 is titled ‘Pharmaceutical Composition Containing Cow Urine Distillate and an Antibiotic’. On the other hand, US6896907B2 is titled ‘Use of Bioactive Fraction from Cow Urine Distillate as a Bio-enhancer of Anti-Infective, Anti-Cancer Agents and Nutrients.’

US6410059B1

Granted on June 25, 2002, the patent describes a pharmaceutical composition comprising cow urine distillate, used in combination with antibiotics or antifungal agents to enhance their antimicrobial activity. The invention proposes using cow urine distillate as a bioavailability facilitator, or bio-enhancer, rather than as a standalone therapeutic agent.

US6896907B2

Originally a divisional patent arising from US6410059B1, this patent focuses on the use of a bioactive fraction isolated from cow urine distillate as a bioavailability enhancer in pharmaceutical compositions containing antibiotics, anticancer agents, nutrients, and other therapeutic compounds. The patent was granted on May 24, 2005.

The two US patents cited by Dr Sudhanshu Trivedi do not concern raw cow urine. They specifically refer to cow urine distillate or its bioactive fraction in proposed pharmaceutical compositions. While raw cow urine is the unprocessed excretory fluid collected from cattle, cow urine distillate is a processed product obtained by heating the urine and collecting the condensed vapour through distillation.Although granted three years apart, these patents share the same underlying concept. Both patents propose using cow urine distillate, or its bioactive fraction, as a bioavailability facilitator, or bioenhancer, to improve the absorption and effectiveness of antibiotics and other therapeutic compounds across cell membranes.

The patents further state that similar bioavailability-enhancing activity may also be obtained from the urine distillates of other animals, including buffalo, camel and deer, indicating that the claimed invention is centred on the bio-enhancing properties of processed urine distillates rather than the medicinal properties of cow urine alone.

Additionally, we didn’t find any UK patent for cow urine, contrary to what the viral captions suggest.

A patent is not the same as scientific validation.

The existence of a patent does not, by itself, establish the scientific or clinical efficacy of an invention. A patent is granted to protect a novel invention or process that meets the requirements of the patent office. It does not constitute regulatory approval, medical endorsement or proof that a treatment is safe and effective for use in humans.

While the patents mentioned by the BJP MP Dr Sudhanshu Trivedi describe experimental findings and proposed applications, they do not state that cow urine or cow urine distillate has been clinically established as a medicine, nor do they amount to approval by any health regulator.

Therefore, citing these patents as proof that the medicinal properties of cow urine have been scientifically validated is misleading.