Non-Human Primates

Tuesday, 02, Dec 2008 05:23

Around 10,000 non-human primates are used every year for scientific experiments in the European Union. In 2005, 4,652 experiments using over 3,000 primates were conducted in the UK alone, making British laboratories the second largest users of primates in the European Union.

Gross physiological similarities between humans and non-human primates have led to scientists using apes and monkeys in animal-based research for many years. Recently, however, greater understanding of the cognitive abilities of primates and their complex social and emotional needs has led to serious doubt being cast on the ethical acceptability of using primates in research at all. As a result, scientific procedures using great apes (chimps, gorillas and orang-utans) are now effectively banned in the UK. The BUAV believes that this ban must be extended throughout the EU and to all primates.

Primates such as the marmosets and macaques commonly used in the UK, naturally live in complex social groups and have evolved to respond to the challenges of dynamic and stimulating wild environments.

Confinement in laboratory settings can never meet their behavioural needs and is thus ethically unacceptable. Monkeys may be obtained from foreign breeding facilities which trap wild animals as breeding stock and whose welfare standards may be wholly unacceptable. Monkeys obtained from abroad are frequently transported in unacceptable and even dangerous conditions and a large number die in transit.

All monkeys taken from breeding centres, even those in the UK, may suffer severe stress from the transportation itself and from the break-up of family groups.

If and when they finally reach the laboratory, primates are frequently subjected to scientific procedures which cause considerable additional suffering.

In the EU they are used extensively in toxicology (poisoning) studies, in the development of drugs and in neurological, infectious disease and reproductive biology research. The BUAV has repeatedly documented animal suffering in undercover investigations conducted in laboratories in the UK and Europe – investigations which reveal that even existing inadequate welfare regulations are routinely flouted.

The use of primates in research is also flawed and unreliable science. Despite the apparent similarities between other primates and humans, they are profoundly unsatisfactory models for human diseases because many complex and significant differences between humans and non-human primates still exist.

These differences mean that primate-based research has not yielded the cures and breakthroughs that are often claimed for it by proponents of animal experimentation. Research on primates has proved unreliable and even counter-productive in AIDS, cancer and neurological research and their use in toxicology is determined by convention rather than scientific need.

The BUAV believes that existing restrictions on the use of primates in the UK are both inadequate and poorly enforced. We are campaigning for the Zero Option – an end to all primate use – in both the UK and the EU and intend to use the forthcoming review of European Union Directive 86/609/EEC which governs animal experiments to press for the Zero Option across Europe.

Next of Kin campaign

In August 2005, the BUAV launched its Next of Kin campaign at Downing Street with the hand in of a petition containing 163,000 signatures that called for the end of primate experiments in the UK . The title of Next of Kin was selected to highlight how the family of primates are human beings’ biological next of kin. Like us, primates are intelligent and complex, have social networks and have unique personalities and unique needs. Primates solve problems using creativity and experience, follow social rules, form long-lasting relationships and, above all, share many capacities for both understanding and suffering. Yet despite, or even occasionally precisely because of their ability to experience suffering on a level similar to our own, humans still subject other primates to scientific procedures which cause them pain, suffering and distress.

Since that launch, in 2006 we published our comprehensive, fully-referenced Next of Kin report, detailing the welfare cost, ethical arguments against and scientific failings of primate experimentation. We have also submitted detailed critiques of primate use in response to developments in the European Union's review of 86/609/EEC and exposed suffering in one of the world's largest primate supply farms in Vietnam. Further details of the campaign are provided on our main website, which also reviews the scientific failings of primate experimentation, the problem of transportation and provides extensive details of the findings of BUAV undercover investigations.