Inside Experimenters’ Monkey ‘Factory Farm’
Thousands of monkeys are imported to the UK for experiments each year. But where do they come from, and how do they end up in British laboratories?
A recent undercover investigation by the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) has shed new light on the abhorrent primate trade. The graphic images from its exposé of a breeding facility in Mauritius – one of the biggest suppliers of laboratory monkeys in the world – tell a sickening story of routine abuse inflicted on monkeys, many of whom were snatched from the wild.
Mother and child: a female macaque is caught with arms and tail pinned behind her back, as her baby clings to her. They will soon be stressfully separated – forever.
Rough handling: workers capture animals from their barren cages. On the left, a monkey is swung by the tail. To the right, a baby clings to his mother. Investigators also saw monkeys slammed against concrete floors.
Helpless: a sedated male monkey has blood taken from his thigh.
Surrounded: a frightened pregnant monkey is held down by a group of masked men in a routine procedure.
An adult macaque undergoing a tuberculosis test, in which a needle is inserted into his eyelid. The pictures were taken on a farm that supplies animals to experiments in UK labs.
Cruel: a very young baby monkey screams as he is tattooed for identification – without any painkillers.
What Happens Next?
Most of the monkeys will end up being locked inside tiny boxes and flown by Air France to laboratories – many of them in the UK – where they will likely be force-fed drugs and chemicals in toxicity tests or have holes drilled into their heads for neurological experiments.
In laboratories, these highly social and intelligent beings will spend years being physically and psychologically tormented as well as confined to cramped cages all alone before eventually being killed when they’re no longer “useful”.
Air France is the only airline that’s currently shipping monkeys from Mauritius to this horrific fate. You can help these animals by telling Air France officials that you won’t be flying with the airline until it stops sending animals to their deaths.
