More on the Venom Trade

In one of our recent posts regarding the troubled Pakistani snake-venom industry, we opined that government price controls were making the black market too appealing for Sindh Province's snake charmers. As it turns out, a similar scenario is playing out far to the south, where India's snake-catching Irula tribe is suspected of selling venom off the books.

For the uninitiated, the Irulas are tribals whose traditional job has been killing and skinning snakes. When this practice was outlawed in 1...