Science or Torture? Spain Key Player in Endangered Primate Experiments
09:10 11.05.2023 (Updated: 09:38 11.05.2023)
© AP Photo / Petr David Josek
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Spain is the third-largest importer in the market, which over the past 20 years has brought up to 238,000 monkeys to the EU for vivisection purposes (performing surgical operations on a live animal in order to research).
Tens of thousands of primates are used worldwide every year in research projects and toxicity tests. These experiments cause terrible suffering to animals, which are often killed at the end of the tests.
From 2002 to 2021, between 218,000 and 238,000 such animals were imported to the EU for experimental purposes. This follows a study published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research, which also showed that the volume of this business over the past two decades is $869 million.
Of all non-human primates, the long-tailed macaque is the main object of trade. It is from Southeast Asia, with Mauritius and Vietnam being the main exporters. In the places of breeding, there are often no conditions to meet the psychological and behavioral needs of animals and those caught in the wild experience severe stress, in addition to the damage caused to the environment.
In Europe and the US, the farms where the animals are being kept work as distribution centers. In the EU, the largest of them is located in Spain, in Carmales, a village in the province of Tarragona. There, Camarney SL operates a facility owned by Noveprim, the company responsible for macaque farms in Mauritius, which, in turn, is a part of the multinational company Charles River Laboratories, which controls most of the global business generating annual revenue of more than $ 3.5 billion
From Spain to Europe
In 2003, thanks to legal loopholes in construction and activity licenses, the first 300 macaques arrived in Camarles. In 2007, there were already 3,600 of them.
In 2013, the organization Igualdad Animal condemned the conditions of detention in this institution, and in 2014, the organization Animals Defenders International published an investigation with video footage of the mistreatment of these monkeys. In 2022, the Generalitat of Catalonia confirmed that Camarney is not a breeding center, but only a distribution and quarantine center.
Approximately two-thirds of Camarney macaques come from Noveprim farms in Mauritius.
"The rest are from Vietnam, from the world's largest macaque farm Nafovanny," the organization Abolition Vivisection, which condemns animal experiments, told Sputnik.
"The vast majority of Camarney macaques are sold to laboratories in Germany, France and the UK. Although, since China stopped exporting macaques due to pandemic restrictions, they are also being sent to another supplier of laboratory animals in the Netherlands, R.C. Hartelust," the representative said, pointing out that in Spain, the University of Navarre "uses or used" Camarney macaques for research.
In Danger of Extinction
Spain, as an EU member, has signed the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), an international agreement between governments aimed at ensuring that international trade in wild animal and plant specimens does not threaten the survival of species.
However, according to the British organization Action For Primates, the long-tailed macaque has been endangered since 2022 as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
"The new assessment was based on the degree of exploitation of the species, which includes trade for research and testing, for pets and entertainment, for human consumption, as well as killing due to negative interaction with humans," Sarah Kite, co-founder of Action For Primates, told Sputnik. "All of this, combined with ongoing habitat destruction, is leading to a decline in wild populations of long-tailed macaques, a key primate species involved in seed dispersal, important to the ecosystem and contributing to biodiversity."
"They are threatened with a very high risk of extinction in the wild nature (...) as they are the most actively traded species of primates and are most widely used in research and testing for toxicity [poisoning]," said Kite, lamenting the fact that such trade has acquired an "industrial scale" concentrated in Southeast Asia and in Mauritius. "This industry should be responsible for the consequences of its actions," she noted.
Is Vivisection Justified?
Experiments on animals include implanting electrodes into the brain, depriving food and water, and injecting toxic substances intravenously. "There are also experiments that seem to be pure sadism, which they justify with behavioral research," they recalled in the the group "Abolition of Vivisection" (Abolición Vivisección).
"Macaques are tortured to see their reaction, for example, replacing their cubs with stuffed animals, constantly terrorizing them with snakes and spiders, depriving them of sleep and food, etc."
But these in vivo research methods are actually outdated. Predictive models can be obtained with the help of computer simulations, three-dimensional cultures of human cells and chips in organs.
"Despite the biological similarity, this does not mean that the effect of a drug or chemical is the same in both species," said Kite, emphasizing that artificially causing diseases that do not occur in non-human primates does not mean that they are reproduced in the same way in non-human primates. "AIDS or Parkinson's disease do not occur in primates," she explained.
"It is unacceptable that in the 21st century, we continue to cause so much pain, suffering and torment to primates and other animals during experiments. We believe that there is a lack of political will in Europe, as well as academic and financial momentum to put an end to this."
"The reality is that using macaques and any other animals to try to get reliable results in humans is completely useless, it only delays the advancement of knowledge that can really help understand and cure diseases in humans," they said in the book "The Abolition of Vivisection", where they warned that "more than 92% of drugs tested on animals, do not act on people."
According to the organization, the researchers themselves "should oppose" the fact that such experiments continue to condition research, as they are required by law. In 2021, at the height of scientific efforts in Spain to develop vaccines against COVID-19, it became known that the Vivotecnia laboratory, where the Supreme Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) subsidized part of the experiments with macaques to develop vaccines against coronavirus, continued to mistreat animals.
The book also claims that CSIC continues to outsource similar practices. "In the case of Vivotecnia, macaques are imported from the Dutch R.C. Hartelust center. These shipments are carried out by road, on a one-day trip, during which they are locked in boxes, with almost no food and drink," they explained.
EU Regulatory Documents
In order to avoid "high stress, risk of injury and suffering during capture and transportation," the European Union has for many years recognized the need to stop trapping animals in the wild, giving preference to the use of animals that are the offspring of those that have already been raised in captivity or come from resistant colonies.
The 2017 feasibility study provided for a ban from November 2022, Action For Primates recalled. But the second feasibility study published in April 2023 concluded that it was impossible to achieve this "in the future".
Kite is "extremely disappointed" because the trade of wild primates "is a practice widely condemned for its cruelty and associated suffering (...) The failure to end the EU's involvement in this trade is a serious blow to animal welfare," she said.
"Cancellation of vivisection" claimed that they do not know about the reasons for non-compliance with directives. "Especially when long-tailed macaques were declared endangered in 2022," they noted. They also pointed to a dangerous contradiction between the two feasibility studies, "because it may mean another sign of submission to lobbyists of animal experiments to the detriment of life, morality and science."
"In any case, the current legislation does not provide for a ban on these farms and the use of primates, but encourages their breeding on European territory, while the use of these animals in laboratories continues to grow," their spokesman concluded.
