One Voice is publishing a new report on primates in animal testing

3000. This is the number of long-tailed macaques to have been subjected to experiments in France in 2020. These primates are the most often used in animal testing and the only ones to also massively be victims of being captured in the wild. Since 2008, One Voice investigators have infiltrated numerous macaque breeding farms in Cambodia, where European laboratories place their “orders” for animals to test on. Individuals are trapped, held down on the ground, then shut into cages to “produce” offspring which will be subjected to all kinds of experiments on the other side of the world... Whether it be in Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, or Mauritius, the reality is the same. And this happens even though long-tailed macaques were declared as a species in danger of extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2022.

Conspiratorial airline companies

After an initial period of being imprisoned in breeding farms, the monkeys are shoved into wooden boxes, piled up one on top of the other in plane holds. Despite a relentless campaign by One Voice against transportation by Air France, the airline company had for a long time been the only one of this calibre in Europe to continue with these horrific flights. It was only in 2022 that we could claim victory, with Air France announcing that they would stop transporting primates to laboratories from June 2023.

France at the centre of the industry

Meanwhile, primates continue to be unloaded in France. But our country is often just one step. Within the Silabe platform, an establishment linked with the University of Strasbourg, hundreds of animals were kept in quarantine before being sold to other countries in Europe.

Monkeys were then exposed to new sources of stress and suffering. In French laboratories as in foreign ones, researchers only tear them away from isolation to implant electrodes in their brains, carry out toxicity tests for medications for human use on them, or even use them to take their cells, their blood, and their tissues. After having suffered years of torture, the monkeys are killed, without ever having known anything other than the cynical reality of animal testing.

Advances attacked by testers

With the ban on importing new primates born to parents captured in the wild into the EU and the refusal from airline companies to transport monkeys to laboratories, 2022 set an enabling environment for putting a stop to testing on animals. But, even though these advances had already been difficult to pull off, the industry, very active with the media and political circles, remained opposed to any progress in favour of animals, and did not hesitate to ensure that regulations were not applied. Vigilance and action are still needed.

Backed by a new survey that shows a French public opinion that is more favourable than ever for an end to animal testing, which echoes the procurement of more than one million valid signatures from European citizens, One Voice is launching a week of action in favour of primates used in laboratories. And is calling on France to stop all uses of long-tailed macaques with a new petition.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice