English summary

Summary: Introduction

All primate species are intelligent, some use tools, others show self-awareness and all are good at problem-solving. Most live in family groups, in organised social structures. We are primates.

In order to distance ourselves from our closest relatives, we refer to them as the “non-human primates”, which helps us to justify their use in laboratory experiments.
Yet our primate cousins have proved themselves capable of learning rudimentary arithmetic; they have demonstrated reasoning; some can speak in human sign language. They also display similar emotions to us, such as affection, anger and sorrow – even empathy.
However to argue that our similarities justify their use in laboratories is to ignore at our peril the fundamental differences at the cellular, genetic and immune system level – differences which are so important to experimental results.

Humans share more than 90% of our DNA with most non-human primates, but nature shows us what a difference this small percentage can make. However, whilst our fellow primates differ in their reactions to chemicals and drugs, we are similar enough to comprehend their suffering.
When they are snatched from the wild, caged, confined, transported; restrained, injected with drugs, force-fed chemicals, deliberately brain damaged – we know they suffer.

Yet despite this, and that more sophisticated alternatives to the use of primates are available than ever before, the numbers being used around the world is rising.
Over 10,000 primates will die in European laboratories this year.

Snatched from the wild

A third of primate species are threatened with extinction. As governments in primate home ranges make desperate efforts to prevent the poor and hungry eating some species to oblivion, the western research community demands the right to take these species for unnecessary and unreliable experiments, when alternatives are available.

In the South American forests trappers hunt for owl monkeys, to sell for malaria experiments in Colombia. The frightened monkeys are torn from the trees, their freedom, and families. Their forest is replaced by the barren factory-type conditions of a laboratory; some are isolated – torture for a monkey.

The unethical and short-sighted nature of snatching animals from the wild, as well as the suffering it causes, was acknowledged in EU Directive 86/609/EEC on animal experiments, over twenty years ago. Nevertheless, an estimated 10% of primates in EU labs still come from the wild. Good intent has not been enough. A clear end to this trade is needed.

We welcome the fact that the European Commission, in their new proposed Directive to replace 86/609, initially laid out a clear policy that animals from the wild should not be used in laboratories. However these good intentions have been fatally weakened, by allowing unjustified and species “exceptions” to the rule. This is unacceptable.

It is of concern that up to now, the scientific debate on the use of primates in research has been defensive, generalised and dominated by inadequate evaluation and support for scientifically advanced replacement techniques.

Europe must establish a clear policy to end the use of apes and wild-caught primates, with a phase-out of all primate use, setting a standard for the world to follow.