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Jul 20, 2006 :: Fortune from snake venom

The Irula Snake Catchers Industrial Cooperative Society [ISCICS] in Chennai has shown sustainable livelihood is possible through snakes. Irulas, a snake catching tribe of south India have been weaned away from trading in snake skins to extracting their venom periodically and releasing them again in the wild.

The 350 members of the Society, of whom 150 are women, extracted venom of 3,200 venomous snakes -krait, cobra, Russel’s viper and saw-scaled viper- last year, and had a revenue of close to a crore of rupees. A gram of dried krait venom costs Rs 80,000. The New Indian Express has a story today which says the caught snakes are held for a month, their venom extracted weekly and then released in the wild. The whole operation is supervised by forest officers. The venom is processed into a dry powder that is effective for vaccine making for ten years.

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