German authorities have called for the closure of a laboratory that subjected monkeys and unwell dogs to hostile treatment.
Undercover footage at the Laboratory of Pharmacology and Toxicology (LPT) near Hamburg published by Cruelty-Free International and Soko Tierschutz shows that a prong held the monkeys around their necks and their hands clipped.
The video shows of the lab, which is now under investigation handling the animals brutally. At one incident, a monkey was thrown on the door where he got its head smacked on the door frame. Some monkeys were held in a mini metal cage and are seen spinning in circles revealing high levels of distress while the dogs were reportedly found lying around their own blood puddle and faeces.
The released footage irked many campaigners and social activists who said that suffering was clearly not being kept to a minimum, as required by law in many countries.
Kate Willett, of Humane Society International, told the Guardian that the use of restraints was “barbaric” and described the conditions animals were kept in as “appalling.”
“The technicians are treating the animals violently,” she said. “This kind of treatment is ethically insupportable and quite possibly illegal. Each country develops its own animal care guidelines, but dogs housed in these appalling conditions would not be up to the standards of the US or the UK, and it has serious ramifications for the quality of the scientific results. Any data collected from the animals would be virtually useless,” she said.
“It’s time for this type of testing to be relegated to the history bin,” she added. “There are new, non-animal methodologies available for safety testing so to see this type of abuse going on in in the name of science in the 21st century is unforgivable.”
The breeding of the animals to be used in the lab is still rampant, despite many countries move to ban animal testing for cosmetic products and other uses. In 2005, it was estimated that about 115m animals had been used in laboratory experiments. Most are killed afterwards. In the UK, there are two facilities where the typically vulnerable.
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