new delhi

A number of drug research projects in India have been halted because of a conflict between a government animal-welfare committee and a Hyderabad centre that supplies animals to research institutes.

Under rules introduced in December 1998, all laboratories that breed or experiment with animals must register with the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals. The committee is chaired by Maneka Gandhi, the minister for social justice and herself an animal activist.

Although the National Centre for Laboratory Animal Science (NCLAS) has twice applied for registration, this has been refused on the grounds that the centre uses monkeys caught in the wild rather than laboratory bred, and that these are kept in cages that fall below international standards.

The committee's secretary, A. P. Singh, last week ordered NCLAS to release all monkeys back to the wild as a condition of registration. But the centre has refused on the grounds that the monkeys were caught with permission from the forest department, and are being used for research under contract with drug companies.

Without registration, NCLAS chief scientist S. Hariharan says, normal activities at the centre cannot continue. “We have stopped breeding laboratory animals and supplying them to our clients, and have also halted on-going projects,” he says.

NCLAS is recognized as a centre of excellence by the International Council of Laboratory Animal Sciences and the World Health Organization, and trains scientists from several countries besides India. The centre has more than 30,000 animals, including strains of mice and rats that have been bred over several decades. “If they are lost, it will take another 20 years to establish similar colonies,” says Hariharan.

Singh says his committee does not want to harm biomedical research, but he adds: “We have to implement the rules. And I cannot shut my eyes to how the monkeys are kept in NCLAS.” But NCLAS scientists say the committee's conditions amount to closing down the facility.