The Primate Trade

The miserable fate of laboratory animals is well known. The sterling work of undercover investigators has time and time again displaced the depraved depths animal “technicians” and “scientists” will sink to in their treatment of these 'assets'. We know about the last days and months of the animals.

Less well known is the fact that the suffering begins well before they enter the laboratories. Dogs and cats are bred especially for vivisection in labs across the world, often owned by a few big multinationals. We know for example that notorious dog breeder Marshall Farms in New York State sends shipments of dogs of up to 40 through Manchester Airport – all destined for laboratories across the UK.

Primates, on the other hand, are rarely bred in captivity. The vast majority of the animals pictured in cages in labs were once roaming free in the tundra of Tanzania, the sugar plantations of Mauritius or the jungles of Indonesia and China. Traders in the countries see primates as ‘profitable pests’, to be seized and sold to willing labs abroad. This despite the fact that most primate species are listed as endangered or recognised as heading that way.

These highly sophisticated and family orientated
animals are simply snatched – despite a load of ssurances otherwise – and brought to holding farms, from where they are dispatched across the world. Many first go to specialist centres such as Mazor Farm in Israel or the now defunct Shamrock Farm in the UK.

Over the years a quiet network of traders has
developed to facilitate the movement of animals from the wild into our labs. Complacent governments allow systematic discarding of all regulations and welfare needs to take place. But they do not work alone. A number of multinational transport companies, often airlines,but not always, is also dipping their fingers into this rich pie. As long as each animal comes with a pricetag, that is all that matters to them.

The cages in the labs, as horrible as they are, are
little compared to the holding units in Africa or the Far East, where they are beaten, starved and generally abused. The journey to the labs of Europe and America is terrifying to already traumatised animals, and despite the amount of money changing hands, the conditions so appalling that a large proportion of them die – some from shock; some from simple starvation.

Every firm that handles them along the way, from the catchers in the jungles, to the handling companies and airlines, to the people facilitating them along the way, is profiting from this trade. They do so in the knowledge that they’ve been getting away with it for years and that the secrecy they operate in is enough to protect them. We plan to change all that.