A day in the life of a laboratory monkey

A day in the life of a laboratory monkey
14.12.2025
France
A day in the life of a laboratory monkey
Expérimentation animale

This account, provided by One Voice, offers a glimpse into the daily lives of the 3,500 primates that are exploited each year by laboratories in France. Nearly 2,400 of them are put to death. These snippets of life are taken from several “individual files” on animals used in experiments. These animals have died (causes of death not disclosed) or, in much smaller numbers, been sold on to other laboratories to endure further suffering and fear. One Voice rarely obtains these extracts from documents that are supposed to be public, and very often has to fight in court to do so.

“They” are the laboratories which do not want us to know what really goes on behind their walls. While waiting for all the documents that the CNRS and the University of Aix-Marseille have been ordered to submit to us at the end of November, we have assembled, from the first partial documents received and old documents and photographs from other places, extracts of what these sentient beings are going through.

It is this cruel and painful reality that laboratories are trying to hide behind “welfare” criteria.

8am

I wake up to the sound of keys and metal doors. The neon lights come on suddenly, without warning. I curl up at the back of my cold cage. Since I arrived at this new laboratory, I never know what’s going to happen.

9am

I hear the other monkeys panicking. Screams. Banging on the cages. Some bite the bars, sometimes bleeding from their teeth. Some fight each other, out of fear, like me. My heart is beating too fast. I cannot calm down. They give me food, but it tastes different now. They say the “cocaine protocol” is starting. I’ve been feeling different things in my body ever since. I have no choice, it’s the only food available.

10am

They open my neighbour’s cage. They grab him by the neck with their metal rod. He screams, clings on. They drag him out by force. Another companion had a fingernail ripped out like that. And he didn’t return to his cage yesterday. I see and hear everything. Now I’m screaming. I’m next.

A little later

I often lose track of time because of all the things they inject me with. They force me into a system that immobilises me. Motionless, powerless, constrained. Frightened. The fruit compote given as a “reward” has never been enough. Each time is just as painful. They connect wires to my body. They operated on me to install equipment in my chest, I don’t remember when. I’m undergoing electric shocks now, more intense every day. Today the shocks were very strong. My hand and foot are shaking without me wanting them to. They’ve been giving me more injections for several days now. They say my device has become infected. I remain motionless. I have no choice. I’m in pain.

Back in the cage

The door closes. Silence returns, but not calm. I feel sick, I vomit a lot. I am afraid. All the time. They write things down on their sheets of paper. I endure every minute, every hour. At first I had hope. Freedom, all the time. Now I wait for the end, again. My name is Eliot, don’t forget me.

Eliot’s story is also that of around 3,500 primates that they exploit every year in France. “They” are the laboratories. 90% of the animal experiments they carry out are not required by law.

For Eliot and all the others, take action with us:

• say no to the expansion of the CNRS primate breeding programme,
• say stop to primate experimentation.

Expansion of the primatology centre in Rousset: a month of actions with One Voice, and a mobilisation that is paying off

Expansion of the primatology centre in Rousset: a month of actions with One Voice, and a mobilisation that is paying off
05.12.2025
Rousset, Bouches-du-Rhône Expansion of the primatology centre in Rousset: a month of actions with One Voice, and a mobilisation that is paying off
Expérimentation animale

Since the summer of 2024, One Voice has been campaigning against the CNRS’s plans to expand the Rousset primatology centre to triple the number of monkeys being bred there for sale to laboratories. The unexpected public attention has led the CNRS to open a month-long consultation process. Presented as “voluntary” and “transparent” but conducted as a communication operation, it ended on 16 November.

Despite the obstacles, the call launched by One Voice and its partner associations was heard: more than 2,200 opinions, mostly unfavourable, were submitted. This is a strong signal on the eve of an official assessment expected mid-December.

June 2024: the CNRS attempts to discreetly launch a call for tenders to expand the primatology site in Rousset. As soon as this information was revealed, One Voice called on the government and the CNRS to obtain the official documents on this project which is contrary to European commitments to reduce the number of lab animals. Faced with their silence, we launched a large-scale campaign in April 2025 with 150 partner associations and organisations alongside the Collectif Vauclusien de Protection Animale (Vaucluse Animal Protection Collective). The media response was immediate. The CNRS, which had hoped to move forward quietly, then launched a preliminary consultation under the supervision of a guarantor from the Commission Nationale du Débat Public (CNDP, National Commission for Public Debate).

During one month this autumn our association mobilised to raise awareness around this project, organising a dozen events in the field with its activists. In total over 1,000 leaflets were distributed in Rousset and the surrounding municipalities.

Proclaimed transparency, organised opacity

Supposedly intended to inform the public, this preliminary consultation promised transparency. Instead, the CNRS provided a promotional brochure with no real alternative scenario and organised a single meeting in Rousset, the municipality most affected. Our actions brought dozens of residents to the meeting. Almost all of them expressed their opposition. Throughout the month of consultation, obstacles were put in place to prevent us from obtaining clear answers: crucial documents were withheld, questions remained unanswered, etc. This lack of transparency is widespread at the CNRS. Though present at all four meetings, the Gircor, an animal experimentation lobby group, did not even deem it necessary to inform the public. Its president, who is also a veterinarian at the CNRS, spoke without mentioning his dual role.

The battle continues

Without our mobilisation in April 2025, this consultation would not even have taken place. The CNRS attempted to use it to improve its image, to no avail. Despite the lobby’s attempts to influence the outcome, the opposition is overwhelming at first glance: of the 2,238 opinions submitted, more than 93% are unfavourable. The guarantor will give his official assessment in a few weeks’ time. Further consultations will follow in 2026. We will not give in: One Voice will continue its fight against this unjustifiable project to the very end.

You can still join us in taking action: sign the petition and pass it on

Join our actions in the field: militants@one-voice.fr

What are the mouse lemurs, bred for experimentation, enduring at the National Museum of Natural History?

What are the mouse lemurs, bred for experimentation, enduring at the National Museum of Natural History?
03.12.2025
Ile-de-France
What are the mouse lemurs, bred for experimentation, enduring at the National Museum of Natural History?
Expérimentation animale

For years One Voice has been fighting for transparency in animal experimentation, and recently we have lodged a request with the Administrative Court in Paris. The National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) refuses to provide us with all the documents we have been requesting for several years concerning the breeding of Brunoy mouse lemurs —the world’s largest population of these small lemurs destined for experimentation. The hearing will take place on Thursday 4 December. One Voice is asking the court to confirm the Museum’s obligation for transparency, as it not only sells these mouse lemurs to laboratories but also conducts tests on some of them.

Since 2021 and our rally in front of the MNHN, we have been calling for the closure of this breeding facility. Around 500 mouse lemurs are kept there in opaque conditions in view of experimentation in laboratories. To understand what is really going on there, we have demanded transparency from the MNHN regarding the management of these animals: entry and exit records, monitoring files, ‘animal welfare’ committee meetings and administrative correspondence.

Faced with the Museum’s silence, we referred the matter to the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents (CADA), which had already ruled in our favour in December 2022. Despite this favourable ruling, the MNHN has persisted in its refusal to provide the requested information.

One Voice is now asking the Paris Court to confirm the Museum’s obligation for transparency, as it not only sells these mouse lemurs to laboratories but also experiments on some of them, as reported in the literature. While some of the experiments carried out may appear to be “simple behavioural studies”, others are only harmless in appearance. In one experiment, for example, entitled “adaptability to its environment”, individuals were isolated, underfed for several days, then decapitated and sent to foreign laboratories.

This is the third request lodged against the MNHN which has already suffered two convictions, seeking to obtain public information relating to this breeding programme —proof of the Museum’s persistent resistance to any transparency concerning the fate of the animals it holds. This kind of unlawful opacity is widespread in the animal experimentation sector, where One Voice has just won a victory against similar practices by the CNRS and the University of Aix-Marseille.

One Voice will continue its fight until this breeding facility is closed, until the full truth about the fate of the Brunoy mouse lemurs is revealed, and until experiments on all lemurs are stopped. Join us in taking action by signing the petition!

Save the horseshoe crabs, victims of the biomedical industry’s blood factories

Save the horseshoe crabs, victims of the biomedical industry’s blood factories
27.11.2025
Europe
Save the horseshoe crabs, victims of the biomedical industry’s blood factories
Expérimentation animale

Despite more effective alternatives having existed for decades, pyrogenic testing* is still widely practised on animals. Although the European Union finally banned it on rabbits in 2024, horseshoe crabs are still subjected to it. Having existed for millions of years, they are now classified as endangered. More than 550,000 of them are captured each year for their blood, and of those around 150,000 do not survive. One Voice is joining forces with the ECEAE coalition to call for an immediate ban on these cruel tests and the systematic use of existing alternative methods.

Horseshoe crabs are not actually crustaceans. They belong to the same family as spiders and scorpions and live on the coasts of America and Asia. Protected from wild predators by a large carapace, they have ten eyes and five pairs of legs and have existed for around 450 million years! It is not however for their importance in the evolution of life, their exceptional morphological conservation or their ecological role but for certain properties of their blue blood that they are coveted by the biomedical industry, and for their flesh by the fishing industry. The four existing species are unfortunately classified as endangered.

Horseshoe crabs, survivors of five mass extinctions but threatened by the biomedical industry

Their blood is used in the vaccine and medical device business for pyrogenic testing to check the safety of products. Horseshoe crab blood coagulates on contact with certain bacteria. The LAL (Limulus Amoebocyte Lysate) test is based on this phenomenon.

Captured in the wild, horseshoe crabs are then kept out of the water in collection chambers where laboratories insert a needle into their hearts without anaesthesia and remove 30% of their blood. Horseshoe crabs have a nervous system, which makes them reactive to the stress of capture and blood collection. Released with a third less blood, between 10% and 30% of them die.

This exploitation is not only extremely cruel, but it also gradually weakens the global population of these creatures, even going so far as to decimate 90% of one species of horseshoe crab known as the three-spined horseshoe crab, in Asia.

Heterogeneous regulations around the world, which govern but do not protect

In the United States, biomedical companies must obtain an operating licence, comply with capture seasons and accurately report the number of animals collected. Blood is collected from live horseshoe crabs who must be released after collection in order to reduce mortality, even though a significant proportion of them do not survive.

In Asia, these living creatures are subject to varying restrictions depending on the country: protected areas, bans on capture during breeding season, or limitations on export.

In Europe, where horseshoe crabs do not live naturally, regulations mainly concern the importation of animals or animal products.

And yet a synthetic alternative has existed for decades

The European Union has been encouraging and, since 2020, authorising the use of a synthetic substitute, recombinant factor C (rFC) which has been available since 2003. This product replaces the molecules sought in horseshoe crab blood, it is already used in many applications, and it is much more effective.

The European Pharmacopoeia is the regulation that requires the pyrogenicity of medicines, vaccines and medical devices to be checked. Despite the existence of methods that do not use animals —and which produce superior results— the LAL test using horseshoe crabs is still mentioned in this regulation and is therefore widely used.

Let’s take action to end the suffering of 550,000 horseshoe crabs every year

One Voice is part of the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments (ECEAE) which is committed to ending animal experimentation.

The coalition, represented by Doctors Against Animal Experiments, will meet with the European Commission on 12 December to demand that it withdraw its authorisation for tests using horseshoe crab blood and instead promote the use of its more effective synthetic substitute.

Help us put an end to this lucrative and cruel business by signing the petition to give more weight to our request before 30 November!

generics.video.play

*Pyrogenic tests are used to check whether a substance or medical product causes a reaction in the recipient in the form of fever. Historically, these tests were carried out by injecting the product into rabbits, then observing their temperature rise before killing them. Other methods use the blood of other animals, including horseshoe crabs.