26 April 2007 - Green Euro-MP Caroline Lucas has called for an immediate EU-wide ban on all scientific experiments on primates.

Speaking at the launch of a parliamentary bid to replace all primate experiments with non-animal alternatives, Dr Lucas said: “Primates are our closest animal relatives yet we continue to subject them to cruel, unnecessary and outdated laboratory experiments.

“The EU is currently reviewing its rules of laboratory animals, and we must use this opportunity to immediately ban the use of primates in experiments anywhere in the EU, in favour of more modern and effective alternatives like computer modelling, tissue or cell cultures and micro-dosing.”

Dr Lucas made her comments at a Strasbourg reception to launch a Written Declaration – the European Parliament’s equivalent of an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons – calling for the EU to set a timetable for the replacement of all primate tests with non-animal alternatives.

The MEP, who is Vice President of the European Parliament’s cross-party animal welfare ‘intergroup’, said more than 10,000 primates are subjected to lab experiments in the EU every year. Some are caught from the wild before being sold to the vivisection industry, undermining conservation efforts, encouraging local poaching and threatening some species with extinction.

Dr Lucas also said that the test results were often misleading and dangerous, citing the example of the disastrous Northwick Park Hospital drug trial, in which six healthy humans suffered severe illness after ingesting a drug found to be harmless in laboratory primates, even at a dose 500 times higher than that given to the human volunteers.

The Written Declaration calls for all EU institutions and member governments to use the revision process of rules on lab animals (contained in Directive 86/609/EC) to make ending the use of apes and wild monkeys in scientific experiments an urgent priority and to draw up a timetable for replacing such tests with alternatives.

It notes the overwhelming public opposition to the use of primates in experiments (80 per cent, according to the European Commission’s own public consultation), the fact that a quarter of all primate species are in danger of extinction and the availability of more efficient and reliable alternatives.

The declaration will become the official position of the European Parliament if is attracts the support of half its 785 members.

Dr Lucas added: “This Written Declaration depends on MEPs’ support – so I urge anyone who wants to take a real step towards banning this unnecessary cruelty to call on their local MEPs’ to sign it before the deadline on September 6th.”

 

ENDS