Search

• Home
• About us
• Take action
• Campaigns
• Media centre
• Publications
• Store

Issues

• About vivisection

• Alternatives
• Animal experiments: the facts
• Ask NAVS
• Investigations
• Legislation

• Animal rescues
• Research
  without animals
• Animal Defenders International
• My Mate’s a Primate

• Work with NAVS

• Translation

1. Scientific Steering Committee ‘Statement’ section

Posted: 13 July 2007

In its first statement, the SSC considers that the use of NHP will need to be decided on a case-by-case basis, taking into account:

• justification
• the possible existence of alternatives
• ethical considerations
• the problems that could result from not using NHP (i.e. perceived need)
• unnecessary and duplicated or redundant research using nonhuman primates should be avoided at all costs (and for example by a EU-wide coordination between research laboratories),
• that the housing and welfare conditions of the animals should be optimal
• that, for each research proposal, it should be verified that no alternative is available and that it is ethically justified.

However, it considers that for certain experiments there may be no alternatives to the use of non-human primates, for example, drugs and vaccines for diseases such as: AIDS, TSE 1, malaria, influenza.

ADI Response – laboratory animal housing, transport, ethics, primate supply trade:

The very act of being in a laboratory is immensely stressful to NHPs. The laboratory is very different to their natural environment in space and complexity, so they suffer from both physical and mental confinement. In addition the nature of transport – the capture, placing in boxes, travel and isolation has significant adverse effects on primates:

• “Non-human primates endure considerable harms even before they reach the laboratory”15.
• In one study it was found that international air transport and subsequent rehousing resulted in the animals’ welfare being compromised, thus changing their behaviour, which indicated heightened stress levels; these levels took more than a month to return to the baseline levels16.
• Although captive breeding of marmosets in laboratory facilities has been successful, this has not been the case with macaques, baboons and squirrel monkeys. Consequently between 1994 and 2000, UK animal researchers imported 13,467 monkeys from: USA (207); Guyana (635); Israel (1,365); Philippines (1,841); Indonesia (241); China (1,196); Kenya (139); and Mauritius (7,843)17. In 2003, only 38% of the primates used in British experiments came from within the UK18.

Send this page to a friend