The HSUS released the results of its latest undercover
investigation yesterday, and ABC’s
Nightline broke the story of what it’s like behind closed doors at one of
the nation’s largest primate labs. A brave HSUS investigator spent nine months
at the New Iberia Research Center outside of Lafayette, La., which confines
more than 300 chimpanzees and about 6,000 monkeys for research.
The hidden-camera
investigation showed primates engaging in self-mutilation by tearing gaping
wounds into their arms and legs, infant monkeys screaming as they are forcibly
removed from their mothers, and a researcher hitting a monkey three times in
the teeth with a pipe. Some of the elderly chimpanzees at NIRC have been
warehoused in laboratories for decades—including Karen, who was caught in the
wild as a baby in 1958 and has been confined in a barren lab since the
Eisenhower Administration.
Response from the new Administration was swift and decisive.
Agriculture
Secretary Tom Vilsack issued a statement saying, “In light of the video
evidence presented today, I am ordering a thorough investigation of animal
welfare practices at New Iberia Research Center. If the allegations prove to be
true, the American public can expect the perpetrators to be held fully
accountable. I take the protection of animals very seriously, and will do my
utmost to fully enforce the Animal Welfare Act.”
Congress is also responding, and today lawmakers are
introducing the Great Ape
Protection Act, which would phase out invasive research on chimps and
retire government-owned chimps to federal sanctuaries. Led by U.S. Reps. Ed
Towns (D-N.Y.), Dave Reichert (R-Wash.), Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), and Roscoe
Bartlett (R-Md.), this is a common-sense policy reform to protect our closest
living relatives from physical and psychological harm, and stop the fleecing of
American taxpayers who pay millions of dollars for chimp research and
maintenance.
Watch
the video of the HSUS investigation, and ask your
representative to support the Great Ape Protection Act. There are more than
1,000 chimps still in U.S. labs and the time cannot come soon enough to give
these highly intelligent and social creatures the refuge they deserve.
