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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: December 2006

Olympics to showcase growing Chinese animal testing industry

 

BEIJING--The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing will showcase the fast-growing Chinese animal testing industry, the official Xinhua news agency disclosed on November 15.

"All food and ingredients to be prepared in Olympic kitchens will be fed to white mice a day before they are served to athletes," explained Beijing Municipal Health Inspection Bureau representative Zhao Xinsheng.

Translated the BBC, "The mice will be fed milk, alcohol, salad, rice, oil and seasonings. Mice show adverse reactions [to common forms of food poisoning] within 17 hours, while laboratory tests take much longer," Zhao Xinsheng said.

The Olympic connection surfaced amid publication of frequent feature articles about animal testing in China by Beijing-based business writer Jehangir S. Pocha.

"Because animal rights groups make it difficult for drug companies to build or expand animal-testing laboratories in the United States, Europe, and India, Glenn Rice, chief executive of Bridge Pharmaceuticals Inc., is outsourcing the work to China, where scientists are cheap and plentiful and animal-rights activists are muffled by an authoritarian state," reported Pocha for the Boston Globe on November 25, 2006.

"In terms of animal supply, China is a good place to be," Rice told Pocha, "as it is the world's largest supplier of lab monkeys and canines-- mostly beagles."

Said Pocha, "Large drug companies such as Novartis, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Roche have disclosed plans to set up research and development centers in China. But the real growth is likely to come from mid-sized companies that outsource animal testing to companies such as Bridge, which can offer them prices that are about half of those charged by U.S.-based competitors. By 2008, that could double the size of the pre-clinical outsourcing industry, which was worth $2 billion last year, Rice said."
Rice predicted that Bridge, capitalized with $26 million from private investors, will be profitable within a year of start-up.

There is at present virtually no government regulation or monitoring of laboratory animal use in China.

"U.S. regulations generally require that all drugs must be tested on at least two species before being submitted for approval by the Food & Drug Administration," wrote Pocha in an October 30, 2006 feature for Forbes, "and Bridge's Beijing facilities are designed to experiment on rats, mice, rabbits, dogs and monkeys.

"The animals are bred for laboratory use and must be kept germ-free," Pocha observed. "Great attention is paid to how often the animals' cages are cleaned and how often they are exercised. But the moral questions about inflicting pain and suffering on animals to comfort and cure humans can't be so neatly addressed."

The Pocha articles grew out of a single paragraph of an August 14, 2006 Globe feature which, widely forwarded by Mary de La Valette of the Massachusetts-based Gaia Institute, seemed to awaken the U.S. animal rights community to the trend of protest-weary companies outsourcing animal testing to nations with little or no pro-animal activism. Often noted by ANIMAL PEOPLE in recent years, outsourcing animal testing to China, India, and eastern Europe was also featured in a January 2006 edition of Business Week.

PETA responded by introducing shareholders' resolutions at the Eli Lilly and Pfizer 2006 annual meetings, asking the companies to "justify why [they are] increasingly exporting animal testing to countries with no or poor animal welfare standards." PETA further asked Eli Lilly and Pfizer to "assure stockholders that these overseas labs are, at the very least, complying with animal welfare standards man dated by the U.S. government."

U.S. and European activist observation of activity in Asia has tended to focus on primate supply, beginning with the joint campaign by the International Primate Protection League and the Blue Cross of India that cut off Indian exports of rhesus macaques to U.S. labs in 1978. Abuses similar to those exposed in India 30 years ago continue to surface in other Asian nations.

The British Union Against Vivisection alleged in October 2006, for example, that a year-long probe found that "the world's largest monkey breeding farm in Long Thanh, Vietnam, kept animals in decrepit cages and weaned young monkeys prematurely," the Cambridge News said. "The farm, owned by the Vietnamese/Hong Kong company Nafovanny, supplies animals to Huntingdon Life Sciences," according to the BUAV, "but fails to meet minimum international guidelines," the Cambridge News continued.

The Himalayan Times, of Kathmandu, Nepal, warned on October 21, 2006 that "With slack legal provisions and loopholes, Nepal can become the next target for those willing to export monkeys to the U.S. for conducting biomedical research." The Himalayan Times noted that the U.S. imported 26,319 monkeys from 18 nations in 2005, of whom 10,608 were for biomedical research and 1,369 for other scientific purposes.

"Covance Research, the largest importer brought in 12,549," the Himalayan Times recounted. "Charles River imported 3,818 monkeys, Primate Products imported 2,340, Rhenos LLC imported 2,760, and SNBL USA imported 1,672.

But increasingly often, experiments are done in the animals' nations of origin, minimizing regulatory oversight--and research is sometimes done covertly, the American Journal of Primatology disclosed in June 2006. "Scientists investigating the genetic make up of rhesus macaque monkeys, a key species used in biomedical research, have found that rhesus in Nepal may provide a suitable alternative to alleviate a critical shortage of laboratory animals used in work to develop vaccines against diseases such as HIV/AIDS," said the article synopsis.

Summarized Himalayan Times reporter Razen Manadhar, "More than 20 rhesus macaques were darted and trapped to have their blood, stool, and hair tested in June 2003 at Swoyaiubhu temple, on the pretext that the monkeys had fallen ill mysteriously. A team of American experts came here without the knowledge of the government and returned with the samples, without providing any treatment to the animals.

"The National Park and Wildlife Conservation Act states that nobody can collect samples from any animal for scientific research," Manadhar wrote. "However, permission can be sought from the Department of National Parks & Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) after paying 2,000 rupees for each red monkey and justifying the need for the test. But, according to the officials, the researchers did not even notify them about the testing."