The use of animals in experiments for India's drug and cosmetics industry and ways to reduce it will be under the spotlight at a gathering of international experts here from Monday.

The European Union, which 20 years ago began legislating to reduce the use of live animals, is now driving a congress on 'Alternatives to the Use of Animals in Research, Testing and Education'. The first congress in India is being hosted by Sri Ramachandra University in Chennai.

The three-day gathering is being supported by the European Commission's (EC) Centre for Validation of Alternative Medicine (ECVAM).

The Indian co-sponsor is the International Centre for Alternative Research and Education (I-Care), an arm of the People for Animals, aided by The University of Meenakshi Academy of Higher Education and Research, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Medical Council of India.

India exports more than Rs.200 billion worth of pharmaceutical products and more and more Indian companies are making cosmetics.

'India may not be able to put its drugs and other products on European shelves after 2013 if Indian companies don't comply with EU animal testing guidelines for such products,' Thomas Hartung, professor of pharmacology and toxicology and chief of the EC's Institute for Health and Consumer Protection, said here.

Once the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals legislation, comes into force, placing products on European shelves will become tougher still, he warned. The common law is designed to make firms prove that the thousands of chemicals they use in products - from cars to clothes - are safe.

This means increased R and D and compliance necessities. 'Thirty years ago, 150 rats were required to do a single lethal dose (LD) testing - done to test the toxicity level of just one component. Now we use just about 10 animals to test a new product's toxicity,' Hartung said.

The European Union has spent 25 million euros to develop alternative methods and another 10 million euros to assess the quality of the new methods adopted, succeeding in bringing down its use of 30 million animals to 11 million animals now.

India's Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals does not have a list of how many animals are in use in this country for clinical trials.

A single big league pharma company in India keeps at least 20,000 animals for testing while a controversial government institution developing vaccines like Chennai's King Institute may just keep 24 horses.

'Though there are about 5,000 such small and big companies, there is no mechanism really to track how many animals are being used for tests in India,' said Shiranee Pereira, the I-Care coordinator.

S. Thanickachalam, the chairman and director of the Cardiac Care Centre and former vice-chancellor of the Sri Ramachandra University, said, 'The Congress is based on India's own tradition of non-violence and will bring to India in-vitro technologies, environment-friendly alternatives in teaching life sciences.'

Internationally renowned scientists like Alan Goldberg of the Johns Hopkins University, US; and Horst Speilmann from the National Centre for Alternatives in Germany will be taking part in the congress.

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