Animal experimentation: France buys, locks up and tortures primates -and intends to continue
In 2025, while public opinion overwhelmingly rejects primate testing (Ipsos/One Voice poll, April 2023), France persists.
Tripling of breeding capacity at Rousset, macaque imports at Silabe, extension of the mouse lemurs breeding farm at Brunoy: behind the hushed words of researchers, the lives of hundreds of individuals are being shattered.
No respite. No alternatives seriously considered. Just a well-oiled machine, turning living beings into laboratory raw material. This policy is a disgrace. One Voice continues to request administrative documents to shed light on what is happening far from the public eye.
Let’s be clear: in France, the future of primate experimentation is being planned, financed and built in the same way as an industry. Nothing is changing. Worse: everything is accelerating.
At a time when millions of citizens are calling for an end to these cruel practices and the real, tangible arrival of animal-free methods, the State is allowing and even encouraging the opposite to happen.
Meanwhile, animals continue to be born to suffer and die on lab benches.
Rousset: triple the confinement, triple the horror
In the Bouches-du-Rhône region, a discreet site in Rousset plans to increase the number of macaques from 600 to 1,740. The aim is to “feed” the needs of French and European laboratories.
These monkeys are not there by chance: they are programmed to serve. From birth, their lives are mapped out: cages, stress, isolation, then syringes, scalpels, invasive tests. They will never see the forest. They will never know freedom. They will be used to exhaustion, then euthanized. A lucrative business, subsidized by the taxpayer.
Is this France’s scientific ambition? To triple suffering?
Silabe: ordered, delivered, broken
At Silabe, near Strasbourg, despite our revelations, despite the withdrawal of approval for opacity, the infernal machine continues.
A new invitation to tender has been published to import macaques from Mauritius.
Behind the postcards of paradisiacal landscapes, our on-site investigations revealed the scandalous capture and breeding conditions of these individuals. Torn away from their world, from their own, they spend hours locked in crates, tossed about, stressed, the weakest dying before they arrive. Once in France, the survivors become objects of experimentation.
It’s as easy as ordering pens. A budget line, an order form.
Their intelligence, their sensitivity? Denied by the logic of the protocols.
Brunoy: behind the bars of excellence, maximum suffering for mouse lemurs
In Brunoy, in the Essonne region, the National Museum of Natural History is home to the world’s largest breeding facility for mouse lemurs, with 470 mouse-sized primates.
Behind this institution’s image of respectability lies a harsh reality: captivity, isolation, repeated use for experimental purposes.
It’s said to be a “science campus”. It is praised for its “French excellence”. According to the town’s mayor, “the extraordinary work carried out on lemurs deserves to be developed and studied further on our territory”.
Our investigations reveal negligence, grey areas and silences. Once again, our cousins are paying the price. In silence.
Politics and science without conscience
What the State and laboratories are building today is not cutting-edge research: it’s a production line of suffering.
France remains Europe’s biggest user of primates, and clearly has no intention of changing course. Substitute methods? Barely mentioned. Financing ideas? Swept under the carpet. The European directive calling for a reduction? Ignored.
We say it loud and clear: animals are not laboratory material. We remain mobilized and continue to request further documentation on these projects. If, like eight out of ten French people, you are against the breeding of primates in France (Ipsos/One Voice poll), sign and share our petition!