On Aug. 24, the USDA entered into an unprecedented legal agreement with The Coulston Foundation that requires the nation's largest chimpanzee testing lab to divest itself of 300 chimpanzees. The agreement settles two federal complaints charging the foundation with multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
Questions about the ultimate fate of the 300 chimpanzees have shed light on a major problem this country faces: what to do with the hundreds of chimpanzees who are no longer needed for research and are simply being warehoused in laboratories across the nation.Since 1986, the National Institutes of Health has spent upwards of $50 million to breed chimpanzees at five laboratories, including The Coulston Foundation. But a trend away from the use of chimpanzees in experiments for both ethical and scientific reasons has resulted in a major "surplus" of these sensitive, intelligent animals.
Chimpanzees are highly complex beings who think, feel and act in ways remarkably similar to human beings. They have language and distinct cultures, use tools and make moral choices. Without government funding to relocate the "research" chimpanzees to sanctuaries, these special beings are condemned to be warehoused in barren cages for decades.
Recently, Dr. Thomas Wolfle, a former National Research Council official who helped set up the NIH's chimpanzee breeding program, told the New York Times on Sept. 14 that the NIH has a "moral obligation" to pay for lifetime care for the chimpanzees it paid to breed. Please contact your congressman and U.S. senators. For more information, contact In Defense of Animals, 131 Camino Alto, Suite E, Mill Valley, CA 94941, 415-388-9641, or check their Web site at www.idausa.org.
Elizabeth Fein
Salt Lake City