Commercial Trade of Wildlife - Animals Used For Medical Or Scientific Research

The use of animals for scientific and medical research is both common and controversial. Under the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) of 1966 and its amendments, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is responsible for reporting on species used in research. APHIS reported that in 2001 over 1.2 million animals were used for research purposes in the United States. (See Figure 10.3.) However, this figure does not include rats, mice, birds, or farm animals used exclusively in agricultural research, as the AWA does not require that these be tracked. The AWA requires that animals kept for research purposes be treated humanely. However, it places no restrictions on how animals can be used in valid experiments. The law does call for the limitation of pain and suffering if doing so will not interfere with the experiment.

For decades, some animal rights organizations have protested the use of animals in research. Activists argue that the vast majority of animal research, if not all of it, is cruel and unnecessary. Activists also argue that, despite laws like the AWA, many research animals live in inhumane environments. Although large-scale animal research continues, animal rights and anti-cruelty organizations have had some successes. Many businesses have stopped testing their products on animals and advertise them as "cruelty-free."

Most animal research is conducted on domesticated species, whose numbers are adequate to support this use. A major exception, however, is the primates.

FIGURE 10.3
Animals used in research, experiments, testing, and teaching, fiscal year 2001

Research and the Primate Trade

The primate trade dates back thousands of years. Mesopotamians used monkey bones to make drugs, and Egyptians trained baboons to harvest figs. Today, however, primates are particularly valued by medical researchers because they are closely related to humans. Because of this, primates such as chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys are regularly used for medical, chemical, and even nuclear testing. In 2001 scientists in the United States used 49,382 primates for research. (See Figure 10.3.)

According to CITES, 40,000 primates are traded internationally every year for biomedical research. Most of this takes place in industrial nations—the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan are the top primate-importing countries. While the results of this research are sometimes of medical value, numerous animals suffer, and many primate populations are in severe decline. All non-human primate species are listed under either CITES Appendix I (Species in Danger of Extinction) or Appendix II (Species Threatened in the Absence of Trade Controls).

The discovery of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the 1980s made primates, particularly chimpanzees, even more valuable to the medical research industry. Pressure on chimpanzee populations due to collection for medical research prompted primatologists to petition the Fish and Wildlife Service to upgrade chimpanzees from threatened to endangered. Fearing opposition from the medical community, the Fish and Wildlife Service compromised, declaring in 1990 that wild chimpanzees in their natural range in Central and West Africa would be listed as endangered, while captive populations outside the natural range would be listed as threatened.

BREEDING PRIMATES FOR SCIENCE AND RESEARCH.

Since the 1970s most countries harboring wild primate populations have restricted the export of these animals. Indonesia and the Philippines, which once supplied 50 to 80 percent of all internationally traded primates, adopted export bans in 1994. These bans have helped restore native populations. As a result, the demand for primates for medical research is increasingly being met through captive breeding. China has been a major source of captive-bred rhesus monkeys for the United States and Europe since 1988. Barbados, which has the largest monkey colony in the Northern Hemisphere, supplies a steady flow of primates for research purposes. Vietnam has also developed as an export center for captive-bred primates. However, some officials claim that many primates shipped from Vietnam were actually caught in the wild.