The Hindu Business Line : Dutch firm refutes vaccine charges

INTERVET India Pvt Ltd, the wholly-owned subsidiary of the Netherlands-based Intervet, a large player in the animal healthcare business, on Thursday refuted allegations made by Venkateshwara Hatcheries that it was getting in live vaccines into the country which could harm its poultry industry by causing an outbreak of the avian flu.

The company also alleged that certain players in the poultry business were manufacturing autogenous vaccines and distributing it to farmers for over an year now and said this could lead to "outbreaks of various kinds'', among the poultry.

Mr Lino Camponovo, Managing Director, told presspersons here that the Union Government had placed orders in November and brought in 1.5 million doses of the H5N2 and H7N1 vaccines in December 2005 as part of its preparedness to deal with the avian flu which had come calling in the region.

"There is no self-promotion of our vaccine with the Government as alleged by certain companies. In fact, we will take a 30 per cent hit in our sales this year since the poultry industry has gone into a crisis with the culling of birds and crash in prices,'' Mr Sushil Nimse, Executive Director, said.

Intervet said 30 per cent of its business in India comes from the sale of poultry vaccines which will now be hit because of the setback to the domestic industry.

Reading out from a letter written to the Health and Animal Husbandry Ministry following allegations in the media that the company's avian flu vaccine had been banned by the Netherlands Government itself, Mr Camponovo said its products are actually being used by France which recently bought 30 million doses of the vaccine.

The company's vaccines are also used by the Netherlands Government on birds in zoos.

Inactivated vaccines

The company also clarified that its vaccines are an inactivated ones vaccine where there is no live virus and so incapable of spreading disease as implied by players in the domestic poultry business.

"It was for the same reason that during the import ban on poultry vaccine in India due to the bird flu outbreaks elsewhere in the world, there was no ban on import of inactivated vaccines,'' he said.

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