For the attention of: the Ministry of Research, the Ministry of Agriculture, the FC3R, the National Committee for Ethical Reflection on Animal Testing, and Silabe/the University of Strasbourg
Each year, thousands of primates are used in French laboratories. These are baboons, vervets, mouse lemurs, marmosets, squirrel monkeys, but also and above all, macaques.
Of all of them, long-tailed macaques are the most vulnerable. Still today, individuals are captured in their natural habitat to supply breeding farms that will sell their offspring to laboratories throughout the world. While international bodies have already blown the whistle on these practices for twenty years, practices have not changed, and this species was declared ‘endangered’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2022.
The majority of long-tailed macaques used in France come from breeding farms in Mauritius and Vietnam (and to a lesser extent from Cambodia and Indonesia). Many pass through the primatology centre, Silabe at the University of Strasbourg, which is at the centre of the European trade of these animals.
In laboratories, these animals endure varied suffering: various tests, cranial implants, water restriction, ‘restraint chairs’ in which they can hardly move... all of this is unacceptable!
I, the undersigned, demand alongside One Voice:
- that the Silabe primatology centre and the University of Strasbourg commit to no longer importing long-tailed macaques and stop the trade of them;
- that national authorities assume responsibility and implement appropriate measures to put an end to the importation, trade, and use of long-tailed macaques in France and in the European Union.
