Although researchers always acknowledged the ability of animals to feel pain, this knowledge remained an abstraction for most. Scientists rarely saw any pain or suffering in their labs. Their view of lab animals as statistical aggregates overshadowed any perception of an individual animal’s feelings at any given moment. And when I went beyond the issue of physical pain to ask about psychological or emotional suffering, many researchers were at a loss to answer. Typical was the comment of one neuroscientist who, when asked about possible boredom of monkeys kept in bare metal cages, answered with a palpable lack of interest: “We can speculate about these things, but I think it’s pointless.” Another responded more impatiently: “Oh, how would anybody know that? I mean, anybody? ….” I just, I wouldn’t even venture a guess.”
Allowed by law: Chimpanzee, name
unknown, in 5’ x 5’ x 7 cage at LEMSIP
Photo: © Nancy Megna
The American public is led to believe that chimpanzees and other nonhuman species in research laboratories are adequately protected from physical and mental harm and suffering by animal welfare laws.
The reality is that the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) – the federal law that regulates husbandry (shelter, food, water, etc.) and general veterinary care – is limited, vague, easily sidestepped, and difficult, if not impossible, to monitor and enforce.
The law does not regulate what chimpanzees and other animals are subjected to in experiments. It leaves that discretion to the research institutions themselves.
In 1985, the AWA was amended to address the specific needs of chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates. However, the resulting regulations are little more than vague guidelines and are widely considered inadequate and difficult to enforce. Proposed improved regulations – drafted by USDA’s own staff – have been stalled by the agency for the past five years following intense outcry by the biomedical industry.
The promise of protection
The AWA, which covers some species of animals in labs, was enacted in 1966. It has been amended four times in subsequent decades.
Under the Act, facilities involved in animal research are required to be licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). (1) These facilities are supposed to be inspected a minimum of once a year by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), a division of the USDA. (2)
Laboratories are required to submit an annual report to the USDA which assures “…professionally acceptable standards governing the care, treatment, and use of animals, including appropriate use of pain relieving drugs, prior to, during, and following actual research, teaching, testing, surgery, or experimentation….” (3)
The reality vs. the myth
But the promise of the AWA to protect animals in laboratories differs sharply from its reality. Former primate lab workers who have witnessed actual conditions and procedures in labs know full well the law’s limitations, inadequacies, and failures as well as the impossibilities of inspection and enforcement. Even in the hands of committed inspectors, the bureaucracy and language of the Act leave animals vulnerable and only minimally protected.
Since passage of the Animal Welfare Act, there have been many documented cases of chimpanzees suffering and dying as the result of non-compliance with AWA requirements or circumstances that allow labs to circumvent these regulations.
Major flaws with the AWA
The overarching problem with the AWA is that it has no authority over what is done to or is not done for chimpanzees and other animals in actual experiments.
There are NO laws preventing researchers from breaking bones, withholding pain killers, forcing ingestion of poisonous substances, burning, leaving animals in complete isolation for months – or other atrocities that in the real world constitute blatant and egregious animal cruelties.
The crucial decision of what is acceptable or unacceptable to be done to a living animal is left to each facility’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) members. Required under the AWA, IACUC members are to be appointed by the institution’s CEO. (4) These committees are typically composed of fellow researchers and a supposed “independent” member of the public.
The AWA has no authority over the ability of researchers to waive regulations guarding animals from pain and distress if such relief would conflict with the goals of an IACUC approved experiment.
Unlike what the public erroneously believes, federal law offers little true protection. Instead:
- The majority of animals used for research are not covered.
- Approved IACUC experiments may not be interfered with.
- In-house veterinarians are allowed tremendous discretion over the animals’ day-to-day conditions and pain and suffering.
- Training for laboratory personnel is inconsistent.
- The USDA/APHIS staff is so understaffed that meeting its annual inspection and follow-up inspection requirements has been difficult if not impossible. In 2002, a new policy was instituted that eliminates annual inspections for select facilities. (5)
- Animals in peril are very rarely confiscated. Under the law, animals found suffering from violations of the AWA can be confiscated or killed humanely* …if: “no longer required by such research facility to carry out the research, test, or experiment for which such animal has been utilized.” (6)
- The AWA does not allow U.S. citizens (the tax-paying financers of NIH grants) to bring lawsuits against laboratories who fail to follow the law.
- Workers at privately-owned laboratories who speak out about infractions of the AWA are offered little or no protection by law. Only a few states have whistleblower protection laws. (Employees at federal labs are theoretically offered some protection through the Federal Whistleblower Protection Act.)
Particulars on primates
Within the Animal Welfare Act, there are scant regulations specifically governing the use and care of nonhuman primates. Included are housing temperature/ventilation, minimum space requirements, environmental enrichment, use of restraint devices, water availability, and exemptions.
In the few areas where requirements are specific, they are bare minimums and inadequate for the natural needs of nonhuman primates. Other requirements are extremely vague and rely on the facility’s own interpretation of standards. For the past five years, the USDA has failed to implement its own staff-suggested improvements to these regulations. Read more.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
- Learn more about the Animal Welfare Act and its flaws
- Learn about PHS Policy, animal care guidelines required for some facilities under the Health Research Extension Act
- Read about the specific AWA guidelines regarding nonhuman primates
- Learn about the difficulties obtaining information about what’s happening to animals in laboratories: Uncovering the Truth
- Read about the CHIMP Act
Last revised: 12/09/06
In 1987, Dr. Jane Goodall visited a lab called S.E.M.A. The facility now operates under the name BIOQUAL, Inc. and continues to research on chimpanzees. She described what she saw at the time:
One of the very worst is just outside Washington, D.C., a lab called S.E.M.A. When I visited there in March of 1987, I saw pairs of three-year-old chimps crammed into cages measuring twenty-two inches by twenty-two inches and two feet high. Each cage was pushed into something that looked like a microwave oven with a little panel of glass at the top. The only contact with the outside world was through a vent with air roaring in. It was so dark in those cages that the technicians had to use flashlights to see what the chimps were doing.
Those pairs of chimps weren’t even being used in medical research. They were just waiting in quarantine, stacked up one on top of the other. Since my visit the metal chambers have gone, but the cages are the same. After quarantine the chimps are caged singly, denied contact with a companion.
What happens to chimps in these conditions? Exactly what you would find if human children were put in those conditions. They become psychotic, they rock back and forth, they give up, they show despair. A preverbal human child and a young chimpanzee have just about the same intellectual ability and share the same emotional needs for affection, reassurance, love, and contact.
We would not treat our most hardened criminals this way, yet these chimpanzees are innocent of any crime. That man who has just killed half his family and slit his little girl’s throat – do you think he’s sitting in a cage this size? If we stand by and allow this sort of thing to happen, we make a mockery of justice.
Reaching Across the Species Barrier: Jane Goodall on Chimpanzees
Remarks made at a press conference and lecture sponsored by Focus on Animals and ARIES, the Animal Rights Information & Education Service. Interview by Orion editor George K. Russell. Obtained online 10/4/05.
Sources
(1) Animal Welfare Act 7 U.S.C. § 2133
(2) Animal Welfare Act 7 U.S.C. § 2146 (a)
(3) Animal Welfare Act 9 C.F.R. § 2.36 (b)(1)
(4) Animal Welfare Act 7 U.S.C. § 2143 (b)(1)
(5) APHIS Factsheet, Animal Care, February 2002. Available at http://www.aphis.usda.gov/lpa/pubs/fsheet_faq_notice/fs_awnewera.html
(6) Animal Welfare Act 9 C.F.R. § 2.35 (f)
(7) Animal Welfare Act 7 U.S.C. §2146