It refers to drug-companies approaching Prime Minister Office (PMO) against any government-move to replace gelatine capsules used largely in medicines by cellulose capsules on the plea that it will cost heavily to drug-manufacturers both as investment in plants and also as increased cost of inputs. With Supreme Court ruling in the year 2013 against labelling medicines according to green and red dots indicating their being with vegetarian or non-vegetarian ingredients, it is advisable to have vegetarian capsules to respect sentiments of majority people who prefer to be vegetarian. Even a particular religious section has its reservation on use of parts of pigs being consumed. It is noteworthy that gelatine is obtained from processed bones, skins, and tissues of animals including of pigs, while cellulose capsules are of synthetic origin.
Argument that having cellulose capsules will increase dependence on China for input-ingredients is baseless, because drug-companies should feel themselves duty-bound for indigenous manufacture of such ingredients. Bulk production of cellulose capsules once being made mandatory will decrease production-cost at a time when presently just two-percent capsules are made of vegetarian cellulose while majority 98 per cent are made from non-vegetarian gelatine.
Madhu Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
