Dr. Jane Goodall and animal protection organizations from around the globe showed their unified support in calling for an end to the use of nonhuman primates in biomedical research and testing. The groups met at a satellite meeting during the 5th World Congress on Alternatives & Animal Use in the Life Sciences held in Berlin.

Representatives from groups in the U.S., England, Britain, Poland, Germany and a host of other countries signed on to a special resolution which was followed by a keynote address by famed primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall, who echoed the calls for a ban.

In a presentation entitled Ending Research on Non-Human Primates, Goodall noted the tremendous changes she has seen in the last 25 years in the public understanding of our primate cousins. “We are at a crossroads,” she noted. “What seems impossible is possible…simply because we must.”

In part, the resolution reads:

We urge governments, regulators, industry, scientists and research funders worldwide to accept the need to end primate use as a legitamate and essential goal; to make achieving this goal a high priority; and to work together to facilitate this…..we believe there must be an immediate, internationally coordinated effort to define a strategy to bring all non-human primate experiments to an end.

The 6th World Congress on Alternatives & Animal Use in the Life Sciences will be held in Tokyo, Japan from August 21st to 25th, 2007.