A Britain-based animal rights activist has urged the Kenyan government to stop harmful research being done in the country using baboons, failure to which the government risks losing millions of shillings in research grants from foreign charities.
World famous primatologist Jane Goodall said Kenya should deny foreign scientists the chance to harm, kill and torture baboons at the Institute of Primate Research in Kenya.
This follows an 18-month investigation carried out by the British Union Against Vivisection (BUAV) that uncovered how baboons are captured and subjected to numerous medical trials at the Nairobi-based institute.
“They are held under conditions which seriously compromise their welfare and breach international guidelines — including those of the European Directive and the International Primatological Society — where they are subjected to disturbing experiments by visiting researchers from the USA and Europe,”she said.
In a statement widely covered by the British press, Dr Goodall said that some baboons were housed in isolation in small, barren metal cages with no enrichment.
She said this was as a result of Kenya’s outdated and hopelessly inadequate animal laws relating to animal experiments.
“I was shocked and deeply distressed to see these intelligent primates in videos that show in graphic detail the conditions endured by some of the baboons at the Institute of Primate Research in Nairobi. The conditions are far removed from the conditions dictated by today’s animal welfare guidelines. In most countries these conditions would not be tolerated and those responsible would be forced to clean up their act,” she said.
Dr Goodall recommended immediate closure of the facility and release of all baboons still held there.
Ian Redmond, a UN Messenger of Peace and a distinguished field biologist and conservationist, said since wildlife tourism is one of the mainstays of Kenya’s economy, the country risked losing revenue from millions of tourists with happy memories of watching the fascinating behaviour of baboon family life if the tourists learnt that these intelligent social animals were being abused in a biomedical laboratory in Kenya.
“Baboons and other primates have a role to play in Africa’s ecosystems (which benefit us all) and have no place in outdated research methods like this in the 21st century. I urge the Kenya government to end such invasive experiments before outraged tourists vote with their feet,” he added.
The covert probe showed that experiments carried out on wild baboons at the institute was often highly invasive, caused immense suffering and was sometimes fatal.
It included invasive brain surgery; stitching the wombs of female baboons shut so that their menstrual blood accumulates over many weeks into a large abdominal mass in an attempt to trigger painful endometriosis and infecting baboons with malarial parasites. In some experiments, infection was allowed to run its full course until all the baboons died.
In December 2013, Newcastle University announced that it would end its involvement in controversial research on wild-caught baboons at the Nairobi laboratories after the BUAV investigation uncovered that researchers bypassed UK law (which banned the use of wild-caught primates in research in 1995) and travelled to Kenya to carry out prohibited experiments using wild animals.
This was also found to be abreach of guidance by UK funding bodies, which require UK researchers to maintain UK welfare standards when carrying out experiments abroad.
“The BUAV is calling on the Kenyan government to take a stand and dissociate itself from the cruelties by introducing a ban on the capture and use of wild primates for research,” said Dr Goodall.
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