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| credit: UK Guardian |
Some humans have amazing capacity for cruelty to other creatures. Often Nazi-like tortures are justified by claims of "scientific research". No legitimate science
US Person is familiar with requires the torture of animals. A horrifying gulag for macaques and other primates held captive for laboratory exploitation has drawn international attention and outrage. Hendry County in Florida is sparsely populated so it is an ideal location to hide unspeakable mistreatment. Both the Animal Legal Defense Fund of California and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection have filed suits to stop Primate "Products", Mannheimer Foundation, and PreLabs from breeding and selling macaques for research. An Ohio based group, Stop Animal Exploitation Now, has asked the US Department of Agriculture to take away Primate Product's license after a researcher reported three macaques died of electrocution. The complain is the second in the last year. A new facility holding up to 3200 macaques is planned to be constructed in addition to the three existing facilities. If built the county would have more captive monkeys than humans. Animal Legal Defense has sued to halt construction alleging the county's approval was given secretly in violation of Florida's sunshine law.
There is a movement among the scientific community to move away from primate sacrifice for research. Besides the obvious ethical issues, macaques carry diseases that are transmitable to humans including
Ebola. Ebola outbreaks in US research facilities have been traced to captive macaques. Primates have escaped from labs and breeding facilities resulting in bites and other injuries to nearby humans. There have been protests at the facilities in which animal rights activists were arrested for trespassing. They get a day in court. What recourse do the suffering monkeys have?
