PASSION FOR PRIMATES

Passion for the Planet TV is teaming up with ADI (Animal Defenders
International) to highlight key animal welfare issues and bring them to
a wider audience. 

From 11th May, Passion for the Planet TV will be featuring ADI films
'Save the Primates', 'Toto Goes Home', 'Big Cat Rescue', and 'Stop
Circus Suffering' which show the plights of primates in research and the
suffering of circus animals.

MEPs vote to support non-animal research but strip away protection from wild caught primates; and remove prior authorisation requirements for over 4million experiments

There is a crucial vote in the European Parliament's agriculture committee on Tuesday 31st March.  This will be on the European Commission's proposed ban on the use of great apes and wild-caught primates, and a phase-out of F1 primates over 7 years.

The primate supply and user trades have launched a massive lobbying campaign, claiming variously that:

• research will be hindered and people will die (hysterical and untrue - most primate use is regulatory testing and there are alternatives available right now)


• a phase out of the use of F1 primates would be bad for animal welfare (!)


• scientific research will be driven abroad (untrue and see our economic impacts briefing).  
  
  ADI has produced technical briefings to demonstrate that these arguments do not stand up to closer scrutiny.  Primate use can be replaced, in a phased programme.  See ADI briefings for MEPs on ‘Ending the Trapping of Wild Monkeys for Research and Breeding', and on ‘Competitiveness (economic impacts)' - 

http://www.4apes.com/biomedical/pdf/TB%20F1%20Primate%20Phase%20out%2023%203%20fin.pdf  

http://www.4apes.com/biomedical/pdf/TB%20Competitiveness%2024%203%2009%20FIN%20EN.pdf

A parliamentary petition has been tabled calling for an end to primate testing.

It comes as MEPs debate changes to the animal testing regulations right across Europe for the first time in more than two decades. They are in the unique position to decide if primates will continue to be used in experiments or if steps will be taken to start the move away from animal testing.

http://www.savetheprimates.org/primateban/news/

Today a groundbreaking new documentary revealing the all too visible distress that lab primates face on a daily basis is revealed by Animal Defenders International (ADI). The Save The Primates investigation exposes every aspect of the global primate trade across three continents, including one of Europes largest testing facilities " Huntingdon Life Sciences in Cambridgeshire.

The international campaign launch comes as MEPs have an unprecedented opportunity to phase out primate experiments altogether for the first time in over two decades.

The advanced sensory, psychological and social abilities of chimpanzees confer upon them a profound ability to suffer when born into unnatural captive environments, or captured from the wild--as many older research chimpanzees once were--and when subsequently subjected to confinement, social disruption, and involuntary participation in potentially harmful biomedical research. Justifications for such research depend primarily on the important contributions advocates claim it has made toward medical advancements. However, a recent large-scale systematic review indicates that invasive chimpanzee experiments rarely provide benefits in excess of their profound animal welfare, bioethical and financial costs. The approval of large numbers of these experiments--particularly within the US--therefore indicates a failure of the ethics committee system. By 2008, legislative or policy bans or restrictions on invasive great ape experimentation existed in seven European countries, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In continuing to conduct such experiments on chimpanzees and other great apes, the US was almost completely isolated internationally. In 2007, however, the US National Institutes of Health National Center for Research Resources implemented a permanent funding moratorium on chimpanzee breeding, which is expected to result in a major decline in laboratory chimpanzee numbers over the next 30 years, as most are retired or die. Additionally, in 2008, The Great Ape Protection Act was introduced to Congress. The bill proposed to end invasive research and testing on an estimated 1,200 chimpanzees confined within US laboratories, and, for approximately 600 federally-owned, to ensure their permanent retirement to sanctuaries. These events have created an unprecedented opportunity for US legislators, researchers, and others, to consider a global ban on invasive chimpanzee research. Such a ban would not only uphold the best interests of chimpanzees, and other research fields presently deprived of funding, but would also increase the compliance of US animal researchers with internationally-accepted animal welfare and bioethical standards. It could even result in the first global moratorium on invasive research, for any non-human species, unless conducted in the best interests of the individual or species.