19 Jul, 08:26 am - AFP
Environmental groups have blasted a Malaysian firm's
plan to establish an animal testing facility using imported
monkeys, in collaboration with a French pharmaceutical research
company.
The activists said the project was cruel and unacceptable, and
that animal testing should not take place in Malaysia.
Officials familiar with the plan said the Johor State Investment
Centre (JSIC) wrote a letter on May 8 to Malaysia's wildlife and
national parks department, requesting permission to import macaques
for the testing lab.
"They (JSIC) said they wanted to import macaques to do animal
testing. But animal testing in a controversial issue," Saharuddin
Anan, director of the department's legislation and enforcement
division, told AFP recently.
"So we invited four local environmental groups to a meeting with
the proponent of the project on June 12," he said.
Saharuddin said the proposal involved specially bred
pathogen-free macaques to be imported from neighbouring
countries.
The wildlife department collected responses from animal and
environmental groups and "we are studying their (JSIC) application
to import the macaques," he said.
A top JSIC official in Johor, a southern Malaysian state,
declined to comment in a telephone call when asked to confirm the
controversial plans. JSIC is owned by the state government, and
promotes investment into Johor.
Conservation group Friends of the Earth said it was "totally
opposed to the use of non-human primates or any other animals for
research, experiments or vivisection."
The group's Malaysian president Mohamad Idris said they were
informed at the briefing with JSIC and the wildlife department that
the partners in the project would be an unnamed French
pharmaceutical research company.
"In laboratory research, monkeys are subjected routinely to
pain... We are morally opposed to any animal research as no animals
should be experimented with when alternatives to animal testing are
available," he said in a statement.
Idris said the lab was expected to source the long-tailed
macaques from Indonesia, Vietnam or China which trade in
captive-bred monkeys.
British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), a
London-based animal protection group, condemned the project.
"The use of non-human primates in research is being questioned
internationally," Sarah Kite, its director of special projects,
said in a statement.
"We urge Malaysia to put an end to these negotiations and to not
allow itself to be part of an industry that inflicts such great
suffering on our primate cousins," she added.
Sometimes the benefits reaped by humans do come at the expense
of others. 
