Experiments Exposed Inside Huntingdon Life Sciences in New Investigation

international | animal rights | news report Wednesday February 04, 2009 18:14 by John Carmody - Animal Rights Action Network (ARAN) arancampaigns at eircom dot net 0879601177

European Parliament Urged to Ban Primate Experiments

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.

Photo credit to ADI/NAVS

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 ADI video Save The Primates reveals:

In South America owl monkeys scream as they are torn from the trees of the rainforest and from their families to be taken for malaria experiments in Colombia.

In Asia, monkeys in rusting, collapsing cages desperately shake their tiny prisons at a monkey supplier in Vietnam that has been approved by the UK Home Office, and in one year, supplied almost 500 monkeys to HLS.

In the UK, the most vivid insight ever of primates in commercial testing has been caught on film at Huntingdon Life Sciences in Cambridgeshire, with struggling monkeys strapped into chairs and forced to inhale products. Many are housed in 1 cubic metre cages and then taken out to be held down by workers as tubes are forced down their throats.

HLS in Cambridgeshire is a major contract testing operation for multi-national product brands which can hold up to 550 monkeys at a time. During the one-year ADI undercover investigation, 217 monkeys were killed in just five studies.

The new Save the Primates report and investigation are part of a never-before-attempted comprehensive study linking primate research and the international primate trade to the alternatives that are now available.

Over the coming days and weeks ARAN will once again be teaming up with ADI and NAVS to ensure that this footage are exposed to the Irish public and of course to Irish MEP's who need to support the ADI campaign to ban primates in experiments in EU.

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