Chemistry and Industry - India moves to protect vultures
The Indian government has ordered a crackdown on the illegal use of diclofenac for veterinary purposes, in a last-ditch bid to avert the extinction of vultures threatened by the drug (C&I 2008, 4. 18). Last month, Indian drug controller general Surinder Singh wrote to more than 70 Indian firms making the drug, also legitimately used as a human painkiller, warning them not to make, sell or distribute veterinary diclofenac, and to label the drug as ‘not for veterinary use’.
The manufacture of veterinary diclofenac was banned two years ago after it was proven to be responsible for the deaths of millions of vultures that ate the ‘contaminated’ animal carcasses. However, stocks of the drug for use as a human painkiller are still routinely being diverted for veterinary purposes.
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Roughly 10% of livestock carcasses in India are still seen to contain residues of diclofenac, says the RSPB’s Chris Bowden, head of the vulture recovery programme. ‘Monitoring vulture populations is a major undertaking but all the indications are that numbers are still going in the wrong direction.’
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The oriental white-backed vulture has already seen numbers decline 99.9% and long-billed and slender-billed vultures populations have fallen by 97% since 1992.
Research published by the Bombay Natural History Society earlier this year showed three species of Asian vulture could have only ten years to live unless diclofenac use on cattle was halted.
Another drug, meloxicam, is just as effective in treating cattle but is currently twice as expensive. Boehringer Inghleheim, the original developer of meloxicam, has pledged 42 000 to [pounds sterling] help further the RSPB’s vulture programme in India.
Until there is a prosecution, however, Bowden acknowledges that enforcement of the new rules may be difficult. The ban on the distribution and retail of the drug should make it easier to prosecute firms deliberately flouting the regulations, he says.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Society of Chemical Industry
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
