If you guessed 25,703, you’re exactly right! I’ve got some more statistics for you, too, because I wanted to provide some concrete numbers to give a bit of context to this photo, which recently won The National Geographic International Photography Contest. The deeply disturbing image, which shows caged monkeys awaiting their fate at a medical laboratory in Hubei Province, China, depicts one small part of a nightmare that continues every day for thousands of primates who are used in barbaric, wasteful experiments. Some stats:

China, where the award-winning photo was taken, was the source of nearly 58 percent of all primates imported into the U.S.

More than 46 percent of all primates brought to this country were imported by Covance. Covance was also responsible for all 25 of the largest shipments of primates (200 or more) into the U.S.

Just three companies – huge, multi-national contract testing organizations that conduct animal experiments for profit – account for more than 75 percent of primate imports for 2007:

1. Covance: 11,935 (46.43 percent)
2. Charles River: 6,140 (23.89 percent)
3. SNBL: 2,400 (9.34 percent)

Close to 98 percent of all primates imported into this country are macaque monkeys, like those shown in the photo. These monkeys are imported strictly for vivisection.

And the photo itself is a doozy.

What's up PETA Files readers! You may be familiar with our recent University of Washington action alert (made by yours truly, so you know it's a good one). Well, PETA recently threw a demo in regards to this alert causing an attention-grabbing article to come about.

Nearly 100 PETA supporters gathered in front of a University of Washington animal research laboratory last week for a very compelling protest. So compelling, in fact, that it persuaded Seattle-Pi columnist Robert Jamieson Jr. to write this excellent article, comparing the torture that primates go through in labs to the horrors of Abu Ghraib.

Check out the article here and if you haven't yet, please take action on this important campaign here and ask the National Eye Institute to stop funding these cruel experiments at the University of Washington and everywhere.

It looks like something out of the latest Saw movie, but then that's what vivisection is all about. This stuff goes on behind closed doors all the time, and only occasionally do some of these hideous stories see daylight. This is the latest, from the folks at the University of Washington, who’ve already been slapped with a 12-month probation due to the sorry state of their labs. The shocking violations detailed in PETA's formal complaints to the federal government are now the subject of an in-depth report by Seattle's Komo TV:

This morning, PETA called for an immediate investigation into the use of state funds for experiments at UW that may have violated federal animal protection regulations. Among the barbaric experiments being carried out at UW, monkeys are having their skulls cut open, electrodes inserted into their brains, and wire coils implanted in their eyes. They're restrained in experimentation chairs, with their heads bolted in place so that they can't move while experimenters track their eye movements, and they're deprived of food so that they'll comply during tests. Komo TV's exposé shows that this is just the tip of the iceberg:

Here's what PETA Primate Specialist Dr. Debra Durham says about the case:

The National Eye Institute is funding these experiments at the UW, and we're asking them to stop. You can write to them about this issue here.

You may remember the uproar surrounding our recent investigation into the Oregon National Primate Research Center, which found apparent violations of animal protection laws and monkeys who were living in constant fear, confined to small cages and traumatized by rough handling. Well, the latest news we’re hearing from Oregon is that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is charged with responding to animal abuse complaints such as this one, has investigated the ONPRC and come up with nothing. A representative of ONPRC, Michael Conn, responded to these reports with the following little piece of Orwellian spin:

The “false information” that Mr. Conn is referring to is incontrovertible video evidence from a painstaking four-month investigation that yielded extensive documentation of abuse, mishandling, and bad practice at the institution. What he means by “harassment,” I can only assume, is the fact that PETA dared to bring the ONPRC’s dirty secrets to the attention of the public. And, of course, when Conn talks about “offering hope to people with disease,” he is presumably referring to the fact that his organization takes the public’s money to perform redundant and inconclusive experiments on defenseless animals—including injecting pregnant monkeys with nicotine and killing their babies to investigate just how bad smoking is for you, and psychologically abusing infant primates to study whether trauma is traumatic.

PETA’s Director of Research, Kathy Guillermo, responded to these reports today with the following letter to the editor. Check it out, and then watch the video of our investigation for yourself to decide whether the primate center deserves anything short of being shut down forever.

I posted yesterday about two “scientists” at the Oregon National Primate Research Center who have squandered tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on hideously cruel experiments that achieve nothing more than reaffirming painfully obvious truths such as that children suffer when they are deprived of maternal affection.

What I didn’t mention is that PETA has had an investigator inside these notorious labs this year, who spent four months documenting egregious abuses of the animals who are used for ONPRC’s experiments. Among other standard abuses, the animals at ONPRC were forced to eat food from their waste trays; they were terrorized when they were chased and caught in group cages; and they suffered such severe psychological trauma that at least one monkey, Megatron, resorted to self-mutilation. As PETA President Ingrid Newkirk puts it:

As I said yesterday, we’re working on getting these people shut down. You can watch our investigator’s video below, and then please click here to ask the USDA to launch a full investigation into this hellhole.

Update: I just heard from my friend Harald at PETA Germany that the kind soul who rescued the lobsters is a PETA Germany activist! So, if you’re reading this, anonymous German lobster-liberating activist: Danke! From der bottom of mein heart.

It’s been a good month for lobsters. Well, insofar as it’s possible to have a good month when your people are routinely boiled alive and made into bisque. Let’s call it a “slightly better” month than usual. First, a study published in New Scientist proved what we all know already: that lobsters feel pain (scientists are sometimes a bit slower to catch on than the rest of us—they are a methodical people). And now, there’s news from Stuttgart, Germany, that dozens of lobsters escaped from an Asian supermarket out into the street, where they were rescued and sent to an animal sanctuary. Here’s how our good friends at Der Spiegel described the incident:

Congratulations, lobsters! We’re all pulling for you. We’re all pulling for you. And for more on this story, Stephen Colbert, ladies and gentlemen:

I’ve been taking a break from the Vivisector of the Week posts for the past month, but when my colleague Justin told me about these two nasty little specimens, I knew I needed to highlight their work—because, well, it really is something to behold:

Eliot Spindel and Judy Cameron both work at a place called the Oregon National Primate Research Center, and they specialize in traumatizing and hurting monkeys.

Eliot Spindel OHSU/Creative Commons Eliot Spindel has squandered more than $3.5 million of taxpayer money since 2000 in an attempt to show that (wait for it) smoking during pregnancy can be bad for the child. It seems like Mr. Spindel could have saved himself some trouble by just asking someone, but he wanted to do it the hard way, by impregnating monkeys, injecting them with dangerous levels of nicotine, delivering the babies pre-term via caesarian section, then killing and mutilating them shortly after they’re born.

Judy Cameron DevelopingChild/Creative Commons I don’t know whether there’s something in the water over at ONPRC, but Spindel’s colleague Judy Cameron seems to share his fascination with performing expensive and painful experiments in the service of a mind-bogglingly self-evident piece of information. Cameron’s work involves separating baby monkeys from their mothers to see how much it traumatizes them—which, as we already know, is an awful lot. Now, thanks to the long hours that Judy and her predecessors have spent in the lab torturing primates, we know that babies suffer when they’re ripped from their mothers and deprived of affection. Thank you, Judy.

Wonderful work those guys are all doing over at ONPRC, huh? We’re going to see what we can do to make sure their whole operation is shut down for good.