Target: Alka Upadhyaya, Secretary, Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, New Delhi, India.
Goal: Enforce strict penalties for any clinic that conducts untyped transfusions, mishandles stored blood, or neglects donor safeguards—practices that cause preventable agony and death.
The Government has issued comprehensive “Guidelines and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Blood Transfusion and Blood Banks for Animals,” establishing donor selection rules, mandatory typing and cross-matching, biosafety standards, and oversight mechanisms. These long-needed benchmarks promise to end dangerous ad-hoc practices and to protect animal patients during one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives: emergency transfusion.
Without enforcement, however, vulnerable animals may still be subjected to risky, untyped transfusions, poorly stored blood, or post-transfusion monitoring lapses—failures that can trigger hemolysis, shock, organ failure, and agonizing deaths. The new framework envisions state-regulated veterinary blood banks, cross-matching to prevent incompatibility reactions, and One Health safeguards to minimize zoonotic risks; these protections must not remain optional checklists.
To turn policy into protection, national authorities should direct every state to adopt these SOPs as binding rules, conduct surprise audits, require incident reporting, and impose swift, proportionate punishment for alleged violations—including license suspension, facility closure, and referrals for prosecution when cruelty is apparently involved. Animals cannot advocate for themselves while on an operating table; accountability must do it for them. Sign below to demand immediate nationwide enforcement and meaningful penalties for any facility that puts animals at risk by ignoring these lifesaving standards.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Secretary Upadhyaya,
We commend the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying for releasing the “Guidelines and SOPs for Blood Transfusion and Blood Banks for Animals.” This framework—covering state-regulated blood banks, mandatory typing and cross-matching, donor eligibility, biosafety, and post-transfusion monitoring—answers longstanding concerns that animals were exposed to incompatible or improperly handled blood during emergencies.
To ensure these protections have real-world impact, we respectfully urge you to immediately require every state and union territory to adopt the SOPs as binding standards, backed by inspections and public reporting. Facilities that ignore cross-matching, store or handle blood improperly, or skip donor screening should face meaningful consequences, including temporary suspension, revocation of permissions, and, where cruelty is apparently implicated, referral for prosecution under applicable laws.
We further request a national compliance plan with timelines, an incident-reporting hotline, and joint audits with state veterinary authorities. Animals enduring emergency care deserve more than best-practice guidance—they deserve guaranteed safety and accountability. Please act now to enforce these SOPs nationwide and to impose appropriate punishment where violations endanger animal lives.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko
