Fiona Macleod
The Medical Research Council (MRC) is setting up a new primate unit at Delft in the Western Cape to breed baboons for medical research.
The council says it is no longer internationally acceptable to use primates caught in the wild for experimentation, and it is setting up the new unit for “scientific and animal welfare reasons”.
But anti-vivisectionists say medical research carried out on primates is invalid and unethical, “whether they are born free or in a prison”.
John Austin, manager of the Delft centre near Tygerberg, says it plans to start breeding this year with about 300 baboons, if it can raise the R2,5-million needed to get the unit up and running.
“The baboons will live in troops in a large, open corral – like the one they have at the primate breeding centre in San Antonio, Texas,” he says.
“The advantage is the baboons become fairly tame, so they don’t get stressed out and fearful like the wild ones do.”
Austin says the 300 “seed” baboons will be imported from the Institute for Primate Research in Kenya.
“We need the olive baboons found in East and Central Africa, because the chacma baboons found in South Africa are not favoured for research purposes.”
Austin denies fears by animal rights groups that the new unit is being set up for the testing of Aids vaccines.
“Baboons are not suitable for Aids research,” he says. “If the MRC asks us to breed primates for Aids research, we would have to import rhesus monkeys from the Far East.
“Baboons are valuable research animals for organ transplant work and cardiovascular research.”
The Delft centre, which is one of the research facilities attached to the parastatal MRC, has been breeding monkeys in captivity for about 15 years. The monkeys have mostly been confined in small cages, and have been the subject of protests by anti-vivisectionists and animal welfare groups.
The MRC has a contract with the Western Cape authorities to supply primates for the research needs of the universities in the province. Presently it supplies them with about 100 primates a year.
There is a large demand for primates for research purposes in overseas countries, but the international trend is to steer away from wild-caught animals. The European Union recently issued a directive stating only “purpose-bred” animals should be accepted.
Neil Fraser, an inspector with the National Council of SPCAs who visited the Delft centre this week, says the centre seems keen to get the approval of animal welfare groups.
“We won’t endorse the new baboon unit, but we’re checking if it’s an improvement,” says Fraser, who’s drawing up a report for his directors.
“Before, Delft used to take ‘problem’ animals from farmers and conservation officials. The effects of putting these wild animals in cages were horrific.
“The centre usually only wanted animals weighing more than 15kg. So if they got 40 baboons, for example, and only needed 20 of them, they’d just blast the others away. It was inhumane.”
The arguments in favour of captive breeding don’t wash with the South Africans for the Abolition of Vivisection (Saav), which has called on the government to prohibit all animal experiments.
“Whether they are captive or wild, they’re still the same animals,” says Saav’s Michele Pickover. “Experimentation with captive baboons is just as unpalatable, and the results will still be flawed and inaccurate.”