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LONDON––Outsourcing animal research to nations where it remains
lightly regulated and non-controversial may accelerate with the May 2005
decisions of British Airways, Air Mauritius, and Air China to stop carrying
animals who may be used in laboratories.
“I can confirm that Air China does not fly any laboratory animals
into the U.K. Our European offices also do not carry primates and other
animals destined for vivisection. There are now no Air China flights worldwide
carrying live animals for this purpose,” said Lorna Allen, Air China
marketing manager for Britain and Ireland, in an e-mail posted at the
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty web site.
Like other such policy decisions by national airways, the Air China policy
tends to encourage building labs and doing experiments where the animals
are, instead of moving animals to existing labs which are often due for
upgrade or replacement anyway.
As biotech work already draws heavily on personnel recruited from Asia,
the British Department of Trade & Industry is becoming anxious about
losing both breaking-edge research and routine animal testing to Asian
nations.
“Trade & Industry officials are understood to have raised their
concerns with senior British Airways management after the airline’s
decision not to accept the carriage of primates, wild birds, or other
live-caught animals ‘for use in any laboratory or for experimentation
or exploitation,’” reported Mark Honigsbaum and Alok Jha of
The Guardian on May 28.
British Airways adopted this policy, Honigsbaum and Jha wrote, after “a
campaign by extremists” that targeted airline and airport management.
Vandalism of homes and vehicles “was followed by demonstrations
at airline offices and travel agents across the UK by a group called Gateway
to Hell, “demanding a boycott of all travel to Mauritius. An Air
Mauritius spokesperson said it was not prepared to risk its tourism industry
while British Airways appears to be at odds with British policy.”
A British Airways spokes-person told Hongsbaum and Jha that the airline
quit hauling animals for labs because, “This is a specialist cargo.
Carrying these animals is not part of our core business.”
British
Airways will continue to carry frozen mouse embryos for labs, an easier
cargo to handle and much less conspicuous.
British labs used about 4,800 monkeys in 2003, most of them from nations
which are working to develop their own biotech industries. Mauritius supplied
7,843 of the 13,467 monkeys imported into Britain between 1994 and 2000.
British labs have not been permitted to use wild-caught monkeys since
1995, but activists argue that some of the imported monkeys might have
been among the 9,000 macaques who were captured as breeding stock by Mauritian
companies between 1992 and 1995.
Gateway to Hell has also directed protest toward Air France, for allegedly
flying monkeys from Mauritius to Paris, to be trucked and ferried to Britain.
A company called Centre de Recherches Primatologiques Limited is reportedly
now trying for the third time in recent years to establish a monkey breeding
facility in Camarales, Tarragona, Spain, which could also bypass airlines
to supply labs elsewhere in Europe.
The Gateway tactics, wrote Honigsbaum and Jha, “mirror those employed
by SHAC––hardly surprising, say police, who claim Gateway
and SHAC are two halves of the same organization.”
Jury selection began on June 2 in Trenton, New Jersey, for the trial of
U.S. SHAC leaders Kevin Kjonaas, 27; Lauren Gazz-ola, 26; Jacob Conroy,
29; Joshua Harper, 30; Darius Fullmer, 28; John McGee, 26; and Andrew
Stepanian, 26.
Arrested in May 2004, the defendants are charged with three counts each
of interstate stalking and one count of conspiracy. Each could get five
years in prison plus a fine of $250,000, under the federal Animal Enterprise
Act, passed by Congress in 1992, strengthened in 2002.
On June 1, Peonyland nursery owner Michael Hsu, of nearby Allentown, Pennsylvania,
announced that he was abandoning a plan to build housing on the nursery
site for up to 500 research monkeys.
The
nursery was extensively vandalized on the night of May 26 by raiders whose
methods resembled attacks on property belonging to Huntingdon personnel.
Graffiti left at the scene named the Animal Liberation Front. Hsu said
his decision was prompted by realizing that the lot is too small.
