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Stop Animal Exploitation NOW!
S. A. E. N.
"Exposing the truth to wipe out animal experimentation"

Newsletters
The Defender
From Spring 2009 Issue

U.S. Primate Experimentation Reaches All-Time High

According to statistics obtained from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the use of primates in experimentation reached 69,990 during 2007. This averages out to eight primates being experimented on every hour in the United States.

Wisconsin leads the U.S. in the number of primates experimented on during 2007, with 8859. The two largest facilities in Wisconsin for primate experimentation are the University of Wisconsin and the Covance laboratory, both located in Madison. This 2007 total of 8859 primates is a drastic one-year increase of 44%.

Maryland is second for primate use with 6304, Massachusetts places third with 5211, Washington comes in fourth with a usage of 4596, and California rounds out the top five with 4470 monkeys used in laboratories for 2007.

However, the USDA figures are incomplete due to a flawed reporting process. Often over 60% of the primates held by individual laboratories are not included in national experimentation figures. The University of California, Davis is a good example of this situation. This facility actually had 7681 primates on hand during 2007, almost twice the reported total of 4470 for the entire state. Similarly, the SNBL lab in Washington actually had 5246 primates which is more than the reported state total of 4596, and the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in Texas held 5652 primates overall, while the USDA reported the state total at 4389. In the most extreme case, the entire state of South Carolina is reported by the USDA to have used 471 primates in experimentation. However, the Alpha Genesis Corporation (Yemassee, SC) alone held 8204 primates.

The increase in primate experimentation comes at a time when the USDA has allowed facilities to perpetrate serious violations of the Animal Welfare Act without any meaningful repercussions, such as fines. The Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (San Antonio, TX) was recently reported for beginning a post-mortem on a primate which was not yet dead. The University of Wisconsin (Madison) was written up for inadequate veterinary care in the death of a monkey. In May of 2008, the Charles River Laboratories facility in Reno (NV) killed 32 primates in a heating malfunction, literally cooking the animals.

The SNBL facility (Everett, WA) recently killed a monkey by leaving the animal in a cage that was sent through a washing system.

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