No bull: PharmaSecure, NDDB arm in pact to crackdown on fake bovine semen

(An Official publication of PharmaSecure)

Counterfeiting is big business, not only in invaluable art pieces, but also in the semen of bulls used to give birth to highly productive cows. So, though India is the world’s largest producer of milk, it is witnessing a steady fall in the number of such highly productive cows.

To stem this rot, PharmaSecure, a provider of brand protection, consumer loyalty and engagement solutions, has joined hands with NDDB Dairy Services (NDDB-DS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), to provide a tool to help safeguard this population of high-quality breeds of cow, both indigenous and mixed.

Artificial Insemination is widely used to raise the high-quality bovine population in the country. And in this process, cattle-owners use NDDB-DS’ branded Superior Animal Genetics (SAG) AI straw containing the frozen semen of high-quality bulls.

Unique code

But with the demand for frozen semen of high-quality bulls outstripping the supply, it was a field day for counterfeiters in many States. Under the current initiative by PharmaSecure and NDDB-DS, each dose of semen supplied carries a unique alpha numeric code printed on the AI straw. Cattle owners, stockbreeders and AI technicians can authenticate the dose by messaging the unique code to a pre-set phone number (9900399000).

“Counterfeit products cause great damage to brand reliability, and increase the risks to life and health of the consumers. Our partnership with NDDB-DS will empower the cattle-owners to instantly verify the authenticity of the product. This technology will help weed out spurious AI straws,” Nakul Pasricha, CEO, PharmaSecure, told BusinessLine.

PharmaSecure aims to protect medicines from counterfeiting by uniquely identifying each medicine pack sold. To date, it is estimated to have protected close to three billion packages.

Secure mechanism

According to researcher Srinivas Reddy, “This is one of the most progressive moves in recent times in the animal husbandry sector to ensure a secure breeding/insemination mechanism aimed at the conservation of the most productive cows in India.”

Omveer Singh, Managing Director, NDS, said the company is spreading awareness of the AI straw through a campaign. This will help weed out counterfeit AI straws, he said.

Currently, about 82 million AI straws are produced from graded semen stations and about seven million counterfeit AI straws are produced from non-graded semen stations in the country.