EU lawmakers call for vivisection ban for primates

0 Comments | AFP, September, 2007

STRASBOURG (AFP) — Lawmakers at the European Parliament called on Thursday for a ban against the use of primates for scientific experimentation.

More than 400 of the parliament's 785 members supported a declaration urging the European Commission to include the ban in a revision of EU rules on the treatment of animals in laboratories.

British conservative and head of the assembly's animal welfare panel, Neil Parish, said the declaration "sends a clear message to the Commission that animal experimentation should be phased out."

In addition to a ban on the use of large monkeys and monkeys caught in the wild for experimental ends, the text calls for a timeframe for replacing the use of all primates for scientific purposes with alternatives.

According to...