Government yet to ban drug dangerous to vultures despite availability of safe options

Published : Nov 05, 2022 17:55 IST A paper published in the scientific journal Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology in November this year points to a new threat to vultures in Asia. As the paper says: “The catastrophic population declines of three species of Gyps vultures—white-rumped G. bengalensis, Indian G. indicus and slender-billed G. tenuirostris vultures—in South Asia from the mid-1990s onwards, was caused by accidental poisoning by the NSAID diclofenac.Ingestion of the drug by vultures when they fed on the carcasses of animals that had been treated with diclofenac prior to death resulted in kidney failure, visceral gout and death.” Presented with the facts, the governments of India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh banned diclofenac. A.M. Pawde, a co-author of the paper and principal scientist and incharge, IVRI, said: “This study alone gives ample evidence that aceclofenac almost immediately converts to diclofenac inside cattle and also buffalo, and is therefore a very serious threat to vultures that feed on the carcasses of any recently treated animals.” Bivash Pandav, BHNS director, acknowledged that the Indian government demonstrated its commitment to vulture conservation when it banned veterinary diclofenac in 2006 and with its support for IVRI vulture safety testing, adding: “Such work to test the safety of these veterinary drugs for vultures is crucial, but the key step needed now is for the MoEFCC and the Drug Controller General of India to convert these findings into the necessary action—and in time to prevent their extinction, and help vultures recover from the devastating 98% declines—so they can once again play their environmental role as nature’s cleaners.” The study’s findings were supported by others. Prof. Rhys Green of Cambridge University, UK, and SAVE chairman, added that “knowing just how lethal diclofenac is to vultures, and the devastating effect it has had, it seems like a very unfortunate loophole to allow aceclofenac to be manufactured, sold and used in veterinary use, undoing all the earlier efforts to secure India’s vultures.” John Mallord, a senior scientist of the RSPB, said: “There really doesn’t seem any need to use veterinary aceclofenac, especially now that there are proven safe alternatives with very similar properties, like tolfenamic acid and meloxicam. SAVE said: “This pressure has only so far been successful for one drug in Bangladesh, where the government recently banned veterinary use of ketoprofen.” The paper says: “There is now sufficient evidence for governments in vulture-range states in South Asia to act, as they did for diclofenac, and immediately ban the manufacture, distribution, sale and use of bolus and injectable formulations of aceclofenac in doses suitable for large animals.Failure to act will threaten the progress that has been made supporting the partial recovery of vulture populations across South Asia.” With scientific facts and the solution to the problem both clear, it is inexplicable why aceclofenac has still not been banned.