India balks at EU mention of animal welfare in trade pact

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2009:

 

 

India balks at EU mention of animal welfare in trade pact

 

BRUSSELS, NEW DELHI--The government of

Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh reportedly

objects to the inclusion of the phrase " animal

welfare " in the provisional edition of a recently

formalized protocol for negotiating a free trade

agreement between India and the European Union.

The European Parliament approved the

draft protocol for completing the EU-India Free

Trade Agreement on March 26, 2009, more than

five years after negotiations began with India in

November 2003.

The text that reportedly offends the

Singh government is scarcely provocative. Listed

tenth among 62 enumerated " General Issues, " the

sentence in question " Considers it important that

the Free Trade Agreement confirms the provisions

of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade

and the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement;

calls on the Commission in this regard to address

outstanding issues such as animal welfare. "

This would appear to be consistent with

Article 51-A[g] of the Constitution of India,

authored by Jawaharal Nehru, the first prime

minister of India, which states that " It shall

be the fundamental duty of every citizen of India

to protect and improve the Natural Environment

including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife,

and to have compassion for all living creatures. "

However, reported the Financial Express

from New Delhi on April 15, 2009, " India has

opposed a reported move by the European Union to

include animal welfare issues in the World Trade

Organisation negotiations. Reacting to reports

of EU pitching for the inclusion of animal rights

in the WTO talks, official sources said these

were attempts by developed countries to block

exports from developing countries using these

standards. "

An unnamed Indian official told the

Financial Express, " These are non-tariff

barriers to curb exports, " which the official

projected would " throw many people out of jobs in

developing countries. "

Of most apparent concern to the Singh

cabinet are movement within the European

Parliament to strengthen standards for animal use

in laboratories and for livestock transport and

slaughter.

The European Parliament Agriculture

Committee on March 31, 2009 approved amended

rules governing animal experimentation which,

while much weaker than animal advocates had hoped

for, will be much stronger than a new Indian

regulatory regime introduced by the Singh

administration on March 5, 2009.

Explained online commentator Smita Joshi,

listed as information contact for Vivada

Chemicals PLtd., of Mumbai, " A proposal from

the department of pharmaceuticals now being

considered by Manmohan Singh seeks to make

comprehensive changes in the laws governing

research funding, drug discovery, clinical

trials, and approvals at different stages, so

that Indian drug makers can re-orient themselves

from being successful copiers of costly

multinational brands to owners of scientific

breakthroughs.

" Drug makers will get a new regulatory

regime that is more friendly for investing in

high-risk research, testing experimental drugs on

animals, and protecting the research data shared

with the regulators, " Singh said. " Faster

approval of various stages of animal and human

experiments is another reform planned. Specific

regulatory changes will be identified in a

detailed project report to be prepared within six

months after the Prime Minister clears the

project, said an official. "

Joshi indicated that the proposed Indian

regulatory changes are based on the

recommendations of " 50 top executives of drug

makers such as Ranbaxy, Biocon, Wockhardt,

Pfizer, Wyeth and F. Hoffmann La Roche, " who

" identified the bottlenecks that hold drug firms

from inventing new drugs. "

Other developing nations have already

attracted considerable investment in animal

testing from the European Union and the U.S., by

offering the combination of well-educated labor

plus lax regulatory environments, but since 1964

India has had some of the strongest rules in the

world governing animal experimentation.

The Indian pharmaceutical industry began

a concerted effort to undo the rules after former

Indian federal animal welfare minister Maneka

Gandhi in January 2002 won rulings from the

Supreme Court of India that allowed her to close

five antivenin manufacturing firms for violating

animal care standards. An alliance of

pharmaceutical manufacturers with practitioners

of animal sacrifice in mid-2002 pushed Mrs.

Gandhi from office and in mid-2003 purged animal

advocates from the Indian federal body that

regulates animal research.

ANIMAL PEOPLE in April 2004 exposed the

Indian pharmaceutical industry strategy by

revealing the content of a leaked document

entitled Harmonization of CPCSEA [regulatory]

Norms in India With International Norms &

Amendment of Breeding Rules With Regard to Import

of Animals for Experimentation. The author,

microbiologist S.C. Adlakha, Ph.D., was

identified as an animal health consultant for the

Animal Welfare Division, Government of India.

The exposé may have slowed the industry

momentum somewhat, but the proposed changes

outlined by Smita Joshi closely parallel

Adlakha's recommendations.

The Indian government's 11th Five-Year

Plan 2007-2012, published in January 2007,

anticipated both expanded animal experimentation

and more use of non-animal alternatives.

Addressing the first Indian Congress on

Alternatives to the Use of Animals in Research,

Testing and Education, Indian Council of Medical

Research senior deputy director general Vasantha

Muthuswamy simultaneously announced that a

National Cell Science Centre would be established

to pursue non-animal testing methods, and

disclosed that a 100-acre National Breeding

Facility to produce laboratory animals was in

development in Andhra Pradesh state.

Meanwhile the directive on animal

experimentation ratified by the European

Parliament Agriculture Committee will cover the

use of all vertebrate animals, cyclostome fish

such as hagfish and lampreys, cephalopods such

as octopi and squid, and decapod crustaceans,

including crabs, lobsters, and prawns. The

directive also governs the use of all

independently feeding larval forms of regulated

species, and embryonic or foetal forms during

the last trimester of their development.

As such, the proposed directive will

cast the broadest umbrella of any laboratory

regulatory regime now in effect.

The directive provides broad exemptions

for non-experimental standard practices in

agricultural and veterinary practice, including

animal husbandry practices such as artificial

insemination and embryo transplanting; methods

of marking animals such as ear-notching,

tagging, tattooing, branding, and

microchipping; and non-invasive practices.

Despite the expansion of regulatory

jurisdiction in the directive, Eurogroup for

Animals pronounced itself " deeply disappointed

with the results of the vote " wherein the

European Parliament Agriculture Committee

approved the directive. Eurogroup represents an

alliance of European animal welfare organizations

in lobbying the European Parliament,

Alleged Eurogroup, " The Agriculture

Committee have adopted amendments that will

remove important mechanisms for the protection of

research animals from the proposed text drafted

by the European Commission if these amendments

are also adopted in plenary, " in May 2009.

 

Primate experiments

 

" Eurogroup is particularly disappointed

that the Members of the European Parliament have

allowed tests to be carried out on animals that

cause severe prolonged suffering, " the Eurogroup

statement continued. " The authorisation

procedure for determining what testing may be

carried out has also been weakened. Some MEPs

have even contradicted themselves, " said

Eurogroup, " by voting to make it easier to

experiment on primates, while in September 2008

they adopted a resolution calling for non-human

primate research to be phased out. "

The approved directive stipulates that

wild-caught primates, great apes, and members

of endangered species may not be used in

experiments except to help conserve their

species. Experiments using purpose-bred primates

may be " undertaken with a view to the avoidance,

diagnosis, prevention or treatment of

life-threatening or debilitating clinical

conditions in human beings, " including so-called

basic research which seeks to identify how

biological systems work, including how they

respond to injuries and disease. This tends to

be the most controversial branch of biomedical

research.

The directive reinforces the prohibition

on use of wild-caught primates by requiring that

primates used in experiments must be " the

offspring of non-human primates which have been

bred in captivity, " according to a phase-in

schedule based on the number of generations of

each type of primate who have bred in captivity

and are sufficiently abundant to fill anticipated

research demand.

Marmosets must be second-generation

captive-bred as soon as the directive takes

effect. Rhesus and crab-eating macaques must be

second-generation captive-bred by seven years

later. All other primates must be

second-generation captive-bred by 10 years from

the directive taking effect.

The directive forbids using

stray and feral domestic animals in experiments,

forbids using wildlife, and requires that any

mice, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils,

rabbits, frogs, dogs, and cats used in

experiments must be purpose-bred. However,

exemptions to the purpose-bred rule for wildlife

and other commonly used species may be granted by

member states.

The directive also limits how

animals may be used if subjected to multiple

scientific procedures.

Animal-using scientific institutions will

be required to establish permanent ethical review

panels similar to the Institutional Animal Care &

Use Committees required in the U.S. since 1971.

The rules governing the use of

primates may inhibit the ambitions of some Indian

politicians and entrepreneurs to undo a 1978

prohibition on exporting primates for lab use.

Their argument, echoed by factions in Malaysia

and Indonesia, is that macaques in particular

are a common urban nuisance, especially since

street dog numbers have declined, enabling

macaques to push deeper into cities, and should

be " harvested " for economic use.

Scientists are mostly not eager to

use wild-caught primates, however, especially

in viral disease research, since wild primates

carry many viruses which could spread to humans

and in any event tend to complicate studies

involving human viruses.

Despite this concern, wildlife traffic

investigators suspect that many of the purported

captive-bred macaques imported into the U.S. and

European Union in recent years have actually been

caught in the wild. Of 27,905 monkeys imported

into the U.S. in 2008, 26,499 were crab-eating

macaques; 838 were rhesus macaques.

China, whose primate breeding industry

is suspected of " laundering " wild-caught

macaques, exported 18,074 monkeys to the U.S. in

2008. Another 1,920 came from Cambodia, and

1,800 from Vietnam, both nations where major

dealers are allegedly involved in

monkey-laundering.

 

Livestock transport

 

The livestock transport issue may be at

least as sensitive to India as animal

experimentation, even though India neither

imports nor exports much livestock to European

Union nations, and would therefore not be

directly affected by pending EU proposals to

strengthen livestock transport regulations.

The concern for India is that the

European Union is responding to international

pressure from both animal advocates and health

agencies to much more closely regulate animal

welfare in transit. Illnesses including

hoof-and-mouth disease, Sudden Acute Respiratory

Syndrome, the H5N1 avian influenza, and mad

cow disease have spread not only from nation to

nation but continent to continent in recent years

via trade in livestock.

This is a difficult topic for India,

because while India nominally prohibits the

export of cattle and their progeny for slaughter,

India is in truth among the global leaders in

exporting cattle and buffalo to slaughter. More

than 17,000 buffalo and 500 cattle per day are

exported to slaughter from Punjab alone,

reported Varinder Singh of the Chandrigarh

Tribune in April 2008.

Stronger international treaties governing

animal welfare in livestock transport might

oblige the Indian government to acknowledge,

regulate, and supervise the clandestine traffic.

But that could be political suicide for the party

in power, since regulating cattle export for

slaughter could be portrayed as approving of the

slaughter of cows, the " Mothers of India, "

considered sacred by devout Hindus and Jains.

" Conscious that animal transportation has

always been a controversial issue, the European

Commission has nevertheless decided to return to

it and strengthen welfare standards for the 60

million cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, poultry

and horses moved each year in Europe, " reported

Luc Vernet of Europolitics on April 16, 2009.

" Before the European Parliament, " Vernet

said, " health commissioner Androulla Vassiliou

committed to make a proposal in this direction

before the [mid-2009] European elections. Her

services therefore developed a draft regulation

which anticipates establishing maximum load

densities on trucks, prohibiting the

transportation of animals to slaughterhouses

beyond a journey of nine hours, and limiting

convoys for other reasons. "

A 120-page impact study acknowledges that

the changes might produce a " slight increase " in

European meat prices.

" But according to Italian hauliers the

increase will be more than slight, " reported The

Pig Site. " Many member countries, including the

United Kingdom, argue that animal welfare could

be better served by enforcing the existing

regulations across Europe. Farming organisations

in Spain say that more important than journey

time is good animal management when loading and

unloading, and in supplying water. And they say

any reduction in density will simply mean wasted

fuel. "

Countering the industry opposition,

" Eurogroup For Animals has written to the

European Commission to express our concerns over

the half-hearted approach " of the draft

regulation, Eurogroup announced on April 24.

" Although we welcome the Commission's

proposal to restrict the transport of animals

sent to the slaughterhouse to nine hours, "

Eurogroup specified, " the text allows for an

unrestricted number of exemptions that may be

granted by member states. An imprecise

definition of 'slaughter animals' will also allow

transporters to avoid journey time restrictions, "

Eurogroup alleged. " If they say the animals are

being transported for fattening, they will be

able to transport them longer.

" Eurogroup is also concerned that the

text does not make reference to a legal basis for

real-time checks on transport movements via a

global positioning unit--a clear necessity if the

proposed regulation is to be properly enforced, "

Eurogroup said.

The implications of Vassilou proposals

for India, however indirect, received

considerable attention from Indian business

media. The Statesman, for example, quoted

Vassilou, European Commission Animal Health &

Welfare Directorate advisor Michael Scannel, and

Czech agriculture minister Petr Gandalovic, who

currently holds the EU Farm Council rotating

chair.

" Animal welfare is gaining rapid

momentum, not only in the EU but worldwide, "

said Vassiliou, adding that animal welfare

requirements should be included as " non-trade

concerns " in World Trade Organization agreements.

Added Scannell, " Getting formal

recognition of animal welfare standards within

binding WTO agreements is crucial for unlocking

the United Nations and World Bank resources

needed to help the developing world raise its

animal welfare levels "

--Merritt Clifton

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

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Fax: 360-579-2575

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