The federal government funds the Primate Research
Center at the University of California, Davis with over $81 million tax
dollars every year. At SAEN, we believe that the American public has the
right to see what they are getting for this money.
As these protocols reveal, this money funds little
more than brutality to the animals involved in the experimentation.
Primates are maintained in a state of paralysis for as much as 72 hours.
Restraining bars, recording cylinders, and electrodes are attached to
the skulls of macaque monkeys. Behavioral training methods confine
primates to restraint chairs and deprive them of water. Sensory
deprivation occurs just before animals are killed and their brains
harvested.
As these protocols are read, the details begin to
sound more like methods of torture than science. Many of these abuses
take place during neurological studies which purport to examine how the
brain processes sensory information. This is likely the most duplicated
area of experimentation in the U.S. with over 175 separate projects
examining this area (nationally) at a cost of over $70 million per year.
In other words, these protocols at UC Davis are nothing out of the
ordinary; they are being duplicated at dozens of laboratories across the
U.S.
Rats, mice, birds, amphibians and other animals have
been excluded from coverage by the Animal Welfare Act. Therefore research
facility reports do not include these animals. As a result of this
situation, a blank report, or one with few animals listed, does not mean
that a facility has not performed experiments on non-reportable animals. A
blank form does mean that the facility in question has not used covered
animals (primates, dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, pigs,
sheep, goats, etc.). Rats and mice alone are believed to comprise over 90%
of the animals used in experimentation. Therefore the majority of animals
used at research facilities are not even counted.
