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Stop Animal Exploitation NOW!
S. A. E. N.
"Exposing the truth to wipe out animal experimentation"

Media Coverage

Animal Activists Protest Conditions At Primate Lab

The Capital Times :: METRO :: 4B
Thursday, June 10, 2004
By Aaron Nathans The Capital Times

Post-mortem reports on animals at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center show they lived in a stressful environment, an animal rights group argues.

Animal rights activists are protesting the meeting of the American Association of Primatologists, which convened in Madison this week. They staged a mock vivisection outside the research center on Wednesday.

"The data you get from stressed primates is not accurate," said protester Lori Nitzel, who did not associate herself with a particular group. "They couldn't even represent their own species."

The group Stop Animal Exploitation Now seized on a progress report issued by the National Institutes of Health that showed 157 primates died between May 2002 and April 2003 at the research center. Of those that died, five engaged in self-mutilation, according to the group.

Fifty-four percent of the macaques who died had gastrointestinal tract diseases, and 64 percent of the marmosets showed similar conditions, the report said.

Twenty-three primates were very thin at death, the group said.

Joseph Kemnitz, director of the research center, said he did not believe the group's report revealed anything alarming.

"I do not believe our animals are unduly stressed. I think, in certain situations, however, animals are stressed, perhaps by social interactions and their group living situations," he said. "That stress is minimized."

Gastroenteritis can have many causes, like infections, he said. "To say that it's stress is quite non-specific," Kemnitz said.

Stress occurs in the wild, too, he said.

"Those behaviors that are unusual in our colony are probably not due to the conditions of captivity, but rather are more typical of the species," he said.

"Those behaviors that are unusual in our colony are probably not due to the conditions of captivity, but rather are more typical of the species," he said.

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