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

Press Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Contact:  Michael Budkie, SAEN 513/575-5517

As University of Wisconsin Yields to Activist Pressure, USDA Confirms Investigation

Madison – As the University of Wisconsin, Madison announces major changes in administration policy for painful experiments on primates, government officials have confirmed the UW is under investigation.

In a November 12^th article in the Daily Cardinal, Christopher Coe of the UW states that researchers at the UW Primate Research Center will be required to adhere to more rigid classifications regarding the definition of distress in experiments. Coe also stated that: "Most [nationwide] researchers underreport distress categories because there is no good definition of distress."

These admissions come as the United States Department of Agriculture/Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service confirms that it has launched an investigation of the UW in response to an "official complaint" filed by Stop Animal Exploitation NOW! (SAEN), a national research watchdog organization.

SAEN filed the complaint against the UW in late October for conducting painful/stressful experimentation on primates without anesthesia, and lying to federal regulators at the USDA about it. Internal government and university documents confirm 109 primates at the UW were used in potentially painful/stressful experiments. The complaint also requests investigations into the deaths of 29 primates at the UW.

"Primates are dying in the labs of the University of Wisconsin who are emaciated, have a total lack body fat, and have suffered from diseases like pneumonia, encephalitis or meningitis. These monkeys have suffered severely at the hands of UW researchers, but the UW won’t even admit that they have felt any pain," said Michael A. Budkie, A.H.T., Executive Director of SAEN. 

The complaint is the result of investigations performed to produce a national report on primate experimentation:  "The Primate Experimentation Scandal, 2003," which was compiled by Cincinnati-based SAEN.

The report (available at www.all-creatures.org/saen/event-nplw-2003.html), is based on internal government documents, and reveals U.S. labs confine nearly 100,000 primates per year at an estimated cost to the federal government of more than one-half billion dollars ($530,000,000).

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