NEW DELHI, 13 February 2018 : PharmaSecure, a leading provider of brand protection, consumer loyalty & engagement solutions today announced that it has joined hands with NDDB- Dairy Services to provide a simple and effective tool to safeguard country’s high quality indigenous breeds of cow.
Today India is the largest milk producer in the world but the country is facing a decline in the number of highly productive indigenous cows. Artificial Insemination (AI) is a very popular procedure to breed good quality bovine population. Over 30% of cattle owners opt for AI in breeding of animals as it ensures a highly productive breed of cows.
NDDB Dairy Services (NDDB-DS) operates five world class AI stations in the country and their branded - Superior Animal Genetics (SAGTM) AI straw contains the frozen semen from the best Bulls of different breeds available in the country. Due to the popularity of SAG brand of AI straws, counterfeiters operating in various states in the country are supplying counterfeit SAG branded AI straws.
The calves born using these counterfeit doses are of inferior quality and produce lower milk when compared to their mothers thus causing great economic losses for the farmers. Further, the use of the counterfeit AI straw can render the animals susceptible to diseases which may then be communicable to humans handling these animals or consuming milk from these animals. Thus the spurious AI straws pose a serious health hazard for the public at large.
In the interest of the Dairy business in the country, NDDB-DS in association with PharmaSecure has implemented a brand protection solution wherein each semen dose supplied will have a Unique Alpha Numeric Code printed on the AI straw. Cattle owners, Stockbreeders and Artificial Insemination (AI) Technicians can authenticate the dose by messaging the unique code to a pre-defined phone number (9900399000).
“Counterfeit products not only cause immeasurable damage to brand reliability but also increases risk to life, health and safety of the consumers. Our partnership with NDDB-DS will empower the cattle owners to verify the authenticity of the products instantly. I am sure our technology will weed out the usage of spurious AI straws. The unique codes are generated using an algorithm patented by us and is not possible for any counterfeiter to replicate, ” Nakul Pasricha, CEO of PharmaSecure said.
Dr. Omveer Singh, Managing Director, NDS said “At NDDB-DS, we are committed to protect the larger interest of the country besides our brand reputation. Currently, about 82 million AI straws are produced from graded semen stations and about 7 million counterfeit AI straws are produced from non-graded semen stations in the country. We believe that the menace of counterfeit semen doses will be rooted out through this initiative. We are also going the extra mile with an awareness campaign to encourage the cattle owners to verify the authenticity of AI Straws by making them aware of the codes and authentication procedure. I earnestly hope that this tie-up will play a significant role in safeguarding the high quality indigenous breeds of cow.”
The rates of counterfeiting vary from 30% to as high as 70% depending on the industry. Counterfeiting is an immense problem in India, causing a loss to the government of more than INR 39,000 crores, as per a FICCI study released in 2015.
