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Animal care comes under Environment Ministry

By P.Sunderarajan

NEW DELHI July 15. Even before the ink could dry, an order transferring the subject of animal care to the Ministry of Agriculture has been withdrawn and a fresh notification has been issued placing the subject under the domain of the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

The issue of animal care has assumed importance in the wake of a running battle between animal rights activists and medical researchers over the maintenance of animals used by medical institutions for experiments.

The confrontation, which has led to the derailment of research activities and also production of vaccines and sera in several leading institutions such as the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, the National Institute of Virology, Pune, and the BCG Vaccine Laboratory, Chennai, for over three years now, had been defying a resolution.

An endeavour was made even by the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, to intervene. But, that too came to a nought.

A meeting convened by Mr. Vajpayee on June 24 with the then Union Health Minister, C.P.Thakur, and the then Minister in charge of animal care, Maneka Gandhi, merely decided that a special session of the Government's Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals be convened soon for a threadbare discussion on the conflicting stands of the animal rights activists and the medical researchers.

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