Written by Jeff Mackey
For decades, PETA has been calling for an end to the cruel and irrelevant use of chimpanzees in experimentation. We’ve made significant progress over the years bring an end to this national disgrace, and now the government is finally taking concrete steps to do the same.
© Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals
At a historic meeting this afternoon, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) committee recommended that the agency cut funding for seven of the nine current taxpayer-funded grants for biomedical experiments on chimpanzees and fully or partially cut funding for 12 of 13 behavioral studies. With regard to the fate of these 360 NIH-owned chimpanzees, the committee stated that "the majority of NIH-owned chimpanzees should be designated for retirement and transferred to the federal sanctuary system. Planning should start immediately ...."
The NIH's momentous move follows the landmark 2011 finding of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that "most current biomedical research use of chimpanzees is not necessary." After the report's release, the NIH formed a committee to determine, among other things, which taxpayer-funded projects should be ended and how many chimpanzees should be retired.
PETA submitted recommendations calling for a complete end to experimentation on chimpanzees to both IOM and NIH during these deliberations—and that's just one part of the extensive groundwork that led to this exciting development. Every step of the way, PETA has relentlessly pursued any and all avenues to uncover abuse to chimpanzees in laboratories and has advocated for the creation of stronger federal policy and legislation to protect chimpanzees from being tormented in experiments.
PETA has exposed cruelty in laboratories, filed complaints against laboratories that experiment on chimpanzees, reached out to Members of Congress, organized demonstrations, gained celebrity support, filed shareholder resolutions, launched online advocacy campaigns, and called for an end to this barbaric practice in popular and academic publications.
The end is in sight, but we must not stop until all chimpanzees are out of laboratories. Please sign PETA's petition asking Congress to retire all federally owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries.
Written by PETA
UPDATE: Santa is making his rounds early this year, and this time, he's come through for more than 100 chimpanzees "owned" by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who are being released from the horrendous New Iberia Research Center. Following pleas by PETA and many others, NIH—after initially announcing a misguided plan to send most of the chimpanzees to a notorious Texas laboratory—has now declared that all the animals will instead be properly retired to a sanctuary!
While this means a truly happy new year (with more to come) for the New Iberia chimpanzees, many others remain in miserable laboratories, where they are subjected to physically and mentally traumatic experiments and captivity. Do like old St. Nick and give them a gift this holiday season: Urge the government to retire all its chimpanzees to sanctuaries.
Originally posted on September 23rd:
More than 100 chimpanzees will soon be freed from laboratory cages after years of pressure by PETA and other animal protection groups led the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to announce that it will be permanently retiring all the federally "owned" chimpanzees at the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana, making them off limits for future experimentation.
The announcement follows a landmark report issued last year by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which concluded that "most current biomedical research use of chimpanzees is not necessary." In the wake of that report, NIH announced that it was suspending funding for any new experiments on chimpanzees and that it would be reevaluating currently funded experiments on chimpanzees.
It seems that NIH is making good on its promise.
PETA has campaigned for the release of chimpanzees from laboratories for decades. In addition to publicizing video footage showing the abuse of chimpanzees in laboratories, PETA successfully campaigned for the permanent retirement of the more than 200 chimpanzees held at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. We also submitted comments to and testified before the NAS, and we submitted official comments to NIH this spring outlining recommendations for the agency's implementation of the NAS report, including calling for the retirement of all chimpanzees in laboratories.
While NIH's announcement marks a tremendous step forward, hundreds more chimpanzees—in federally funded and private laboratories—must still be retired.
Please urge your congressional representatives to support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, which would ban invasive experiments on chimpanzees and retire all federally owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries.
This time, the sad news comes from Japan: Pan-kun, a well-known chimpanzee from the Aso Cuddly Dominion Zoo who is forced to dress in costumes and perform for gawking audiences, erupted in frustration after a show and violently attacked a student trainee. Pan-kun remains at the zoo but has been "retired" from performing. The young woman has been hospitalized.
Because chimpanzees, monkeys, and other nonhuman primates remind us of ourselves, we're fascinated to observe them—but incarcerating exotic animals far from their natural environment and society can result in unpredictable and dangerous behavior.
We hardly needed yet another example of how the growing frustration of wild animals who are held captive and made to do stupid tricks for our amusement under the threat of physical punishment turns them into ticking time bombs. But here it is. And there'll be more so long as we keep compelling smart, sensitive, and complex animals to entertain us against their will.
You can help. Sign PETA's pledge never to support film and television productions that exploit great ape "actors."
Just six months after PETA announced that it had purchased stock in BIOQUAL—the company formerly known as "SEMA"—to urge it to phase out the use of chimpanzees in experiments, the Washington Post reports that the company is doing just that.
BIOQUAL's announcement comes 25 years after Jane Goodall called for the closure of SEMA after undercover video footage released by PETA revealed abysmal conditions in the lab. Baby chimpanzees were locked inside tiny steel boxes in complete isolation and exhibited signs of insanity, rocking incessantly in their dark cages. The misery of the SEMA chimpanzees is documented in PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk's landmark book Free the Animals.
Until this development, little but its name seemed to have changed at BIOQUAL. PETA recently used the Freedom of Information Act to secure descriptions of BIOQUAL's experiments on chimpanzees. We learned that in one experiment, six infant chimpanzees—some as young as 9 months of age—were taken from their mothers, caged individually, exposed to a virus, and subjected to months of painful liver, bone marrow, lymph node, and intestinal biopsies. This April, we pointed out in official comments submitted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that these and other experiments on chimpanzees at BIOQUAL were considered unnecessary by the Institute of Medicine in its landmark report on the scientific validity of experiments on chimpanzees, and we called on the NIH to discontinue its funding.
Chimpanzees are our closest relatives, with psychological and physical needs that are strikingly similar to our own. They are intelligent, have unique personalities, and are capable of experiencing profound suffering. However, this has not saved them from being imprisoned, stripped of their autonomy, and used in invasive and sometimes painful experiments. The U.S. is the only developed country that continues to use chimpanzees in invasive experiments, but the pending Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act would ban invasive experiments on chimpanzees and retire more than 600 federally owned chimpanzees.
Please tell your congressional representatives that all chimpanzees in U.S. laboratories should be sent to reputable sanctuaries and allowed to live out their remaining years in peace.
Written by Michelle Kretzer
Google goes gaga for vegan food, learn how to show bunnies some love this Valentine's Day, and help us ask Florida not to change its slogan to "The Hoarder State." Here's everything in PETA's world that you might have missed this week.
Don't miss any breaking animal rights stories. Hop on over to PETA's Tumblr page for the latest:
Written by Jennifer OConnor
Federal laws are known for having loopholes, and a regulation that allows notorious animal abusers and profiteers to use chimpanzees for purely commercial purposes and in horrific laboratory experiments needs to be closed right now. Currently, only wild chimpanzees are protected as endangered under the Endangered Species Act—captive chimpanzees are inexplicably denied these protections—but that could soon change.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has proposed an amendment that would remove this major exemption and protect wild and captive chimpanzees equally for the first time. PETA supports this new rule since it means captive chimpanzees who are forced to perform confusing and unnatural tricks in the name of entertainment and who suffer at the hands of callous experimenters would be given the full protection of the Endangered Species Act, which prohibits harming and harassing listed species.
The FWS is asking the public for comments on this proposed change and needs to hear from you by the end of the day on January 30.
Click here to urge the FWS to give captive chimpanzees the same protections currently afforded to their wild counterparts.
Bananas? We don't need no stinkin' bananas. At least Kanzi the bonobo doesn't. He taught himself how to make fire and cook food.
Chimpanzees have their own emergency broadcast system. They use special sounds to warn their unaware friends about danger, but they don't send out a warning when the other chimpanzees already see it. This turns the belief that only humans recognize that others are not informed on its head.
Shiny Things | cc by 2.0
Clever pigeons are once again showing why "birdbrain" is a compliment. The birds are proving that they can count by putting groups of items in order by quantity.
We all read City Mouse, Country Mouse, but what about city bird, country bird? When flirting, urban birds adjust their voices to be heard over the din of the city, so they sing differently from their country cousins.
Deer and cows certainly aren't cousins, but they can become best friends. When a cow named Wanda escaped from a farm, she eluded capture for five months, living with a herd of deer who would stomp on the ground to let Wanda know that their acute senses detected people approaching. Wanda now has a home on a farm and is not in danger of being slaughtered.
Of course, for a best friend whose loyalty is unmatched, one need look no further than a dog. A Russian dog stood guard over the body of his deceased canine companion for two weeks in temperatures of negative-58 degrees Fahrenheit. Animal advocates caught him and took him to a local animal shelter, where he will stay while they search for a permanent home.
For more amazing animal stories, check out an article on the new book Animal Tool Behavior.
A chimpanzee named Cheetah, who reportedly played Johnny Weissmuller's sidekick in the old Tarzan movies, has died. There is some debate over Cheetah's credentials, but regardless of whether he ever acted in the Tarzan movies, he almost certainly was torn away from his family and home when he was just a baby and spent decades being exploited by humans.
He ended his years in a Florida "scamtuary"—a facility formerly known as the Chimp Farm—which for years confined intelligent primates to cramped concrete and iron cells. Unfortunately, little has improved since the outfit gave itself the misleadingly grandiose name of Suncoast Primate Sanctuary and the original owner's granddaughter took over operations.
Ending up in decrepit roadside zoos is often how animal "actors" are "retired." Please never buy a ticket to a movie that uses animals instead of innovative computer-generated imagery, and never visit roadside zoos and pseudo-sanctuaries that continue to exploit formerly famous animals to their dying day.
Just hours after the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine (IOM) announced the findings of its long-awaited report on the scientific validity of experiments on chimpanzees, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which commissioned the report, announced that it was suspending funding for any new experiments on chimpanzees. All currently funded experiments on chimpanzees will be re-evaluated, and funding for many may end.
You may remember that we testified at the IOM committee's hearing on the issue last summer. The committee listened to us and to the scientists who testified and concluded that "most current biomedical research use of chimpanzees is not necessary."
© Smileus | iStockPhoto.com
NIH had originally commissioned the study in response to the outcry from PETA and other animal protection groups when the agency tried to pull more than 200 chimpanzees out of retirement at the Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico and send them back to laboratories. PETA, politicians, and other animal advocates stopped the move, and now, none of the chimpanzees at Alamorgordo, or any other NIH-owned chimpanzees not currently enrolled in experiments, can be used pending a further review by NIH.
This may well be the beginning of the end of chimpanzee experimentation. However, until these experiments are permanently banned, hundreds of chimpanzees are still in peril, which is why it remains vital that Congress pass the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, which would phase out the use of all chimpanzees in invasive experiments and permanently retire more than 600 federally owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries, where they could live in peace at last. You can help by clicking here to urge your congressional representatives to pass this groundbreaking law and end the use of all great apes in experiments.
Experts are calling on director Cameron Crowe to stop using primates as props in his films, like his upcoming We Bought a Zoo:
If you see an animal in a movie, commercial, or print advertisement, please let us know info@peta.org so that we can take action.
Written by Jennifer O'Connor
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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