Does Getting Lab Animals Off Planes Really Help Them?

[FYI. For Your Interest.]

Does Getting Lab Animals [sic] Off Planes Really Help Them?

The animal rights [sic] organization PETA considered the contents of the Lufthansa jet's cargo hold scandalous. Twenty-four hours later, Lufthansa agreed.

Images of beagles -- with their floppy ears and trusting eyes staring out from behind the bars of their crates -- appeared on the PETA website. Some 50 animals were being flown to Scotland, the group claimed, to the Charles River Laboratories, where they were to be used in experiments.

Before long, the German airline was flooded with hundreds of angry emails. On Facebook, posters berated Lufthansa for contributing to the torture and killing of animals. The company gave in and announced that it would not transport any more dogs or cats being used in experiments.

In the battle over animal research, many activists are directing their attacks at the weakest link in the chain: the transporters. Many airlines have now refused to carry lab animals -- and especially primates, which stir the most controversy.

For years, British Airways has refused to allow lab monkeys into its cargo holds. In the US, no major airlines transport lab animals anymore. And, in Europe, the only international carrier to still accept them onboard is Air France. The airline has defended its stance on its website, saying that the company is convinced of the benefits of animal experiments for biomedical research. Even so, in March, the airline reportedly refused to transport 60 monkeys from Mauritius to the US.

A Battle between Image and Safety

"We cannot understand how some airlines are unwilling to transport laboratory animals even though they continue to take pets, zoo animals, racehorses and animals used in agriculture," says Siegfried Throm, director of research, development and innovation at Germany's Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (vfa).

Still, for the airlines, it is time-consuming and costly to transport some animals. With monkeys, for example, airline employees have to wear protective clothing when taking them on and off planes, and the cargo hold has to be disinfected after the flight. Above all, though, the airlines are worried about getting a bad image.

"It is a huge problem when a minority uses undemocratic and opaque methods to determine what should be allowed regardless of what the laws say or what people want," says Stefan Treue, director of the German Primate Center (DPZ) in Göttingen, about the influence of animal rights activists.

The DPZ supplies German universities and research institutes with primates from its own breeding program. Of the 1,400 animals at the facility, between 40 and 80 are sent to scientific institutions each year. As a result, the DPZ claims that German academic researchers hardly have to import any primates.

In 2010, experiments were carried out on 2,789 primates in Germany, or fewer than in previous years. Most of them are used in industrial research, in tests aimed at determining whether substances are poisonous before they are tested on humans.

A Lucrative Business

A large number of the laboratory monkeys used in Western labs originate from China, Vietnam and Mauritius. They come from those countries for the same reason many clothes and toys are produced there: the price. A Rhesus monkey raised in Germany at the DPZ costs more than €5,000 ($6,600) and is subsidized by taxpayer money. The real costs are at least twice that much. A monkey from Africa or Asia, on the other hand, costs between €1,000 and €2,000, including transport.

It's a lucrative business. In China alone, there are about 40 breeding facilities, which supply roughly 70 percent of the laboratory primates in the US. Last year, the US imported 18,044 of them.

Most of the primates are flown to the US on Chinese airlines, making the journey in wooden crates in the cargo hold. A US animal rights organization recently tracked the odyssey of 100 macaque monkeys flown from Indonesia to the Philippines and, from there, to San Francisco. Once there, they were transported to Louisiana by truck. The entire journey lasted 56 hours.

Still, even shorter flights and quarantines put the animals under stress. During the trip, the animals can develop lung infections, suffer from dehydration or show behavioral changes. At the end of a trip, many are found dead in their crates.

Other Targets of Protest

Given the protests and shrinking number of airlines willing to transport animals, pharmaceutical companies and universities are starting to have more of their laboratory animals transported via overland routes. But since these journeys require more time, could it be that the protests are actually increasing the number of strains on lab animals?

Irmela Ruhdel of the German Animal Welfare Federation disagrees, saying: "The more difficult it is for scientists to get animals, the more they will think about using alternative methods."

Activists are also using protests in an effort to block different ways of transporting animals, and with some success. In January, the last ferry company stopped shipping lab mice from continental Europe to Britain.

Translated from the German by Mary Beth Warner

[Kerry Baker]

I suspect that the more difficult using animals becomes, the more inclined universities and pharmaceutical companies will be to find easier ways to do their research.  I think it has been clearly demonstrated that use of animals is unnecessary.  If they are using slower overland transport it will be firstly more visible, and subject to (presumably) a whole lot of regulations.  I get that it may result in an increase in animal suffering.  I suspect however at least for the pharmaceutical companies they will simply go offshore to places like China where at least in the foreseeable future there won't be as much trouble.

The benefit in getting airlines not to carry animals for research is more about sending a message.  This is not a bad thing.

[Kerry Baker]

Hi Roger.  Yes totally agree.  I understand however that there is a burgeoning animal rights welfare movement in China, as there are in other countries we would anticipate 1st world companies using like Africa and Thailand etc.

The strategy is tricky but I think networking is the obvious start.  Just how to track down these groups is politically difficult given what we know of Chinese Government methods for control.