ADRIAN BLOMFIELD, Nairobi | Wednesday
A BRITISH animal welfare group has exposed a ”cruel and secretive trade” in endangered baboons, which are being sold from Tanzania to medical research organisations in the United States.
The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) said hundreds of Olive Baboons were being trapped and held for weeks in appalling conditions, warning that the trade was posing a threat to the primates’ future.
The UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) classes Olive Baboons as potentially in danger of extinction and has strict regulations governing their trade and shipment.
Primarily found in Tanzania and Kenya, the baboons are also threatened by the destruction of their natural habitat as well as a growing trade in their meat within Africa.
The baboons are shipped to the United States in journeys that often lasted three days. While the trade itself was not illegal, the conditions in which the animals were kept were in breach of CITES rules, BUAV said.
On arrival in the United States, the baboons are used in xenotransplant experiments where they are transplanted with pig organs – some of which contain human genes.
No baboon has ever survived a xenotransplant experiment.
According to the report, the baboons are held in rows of crates so small they cannot stand up and can barely turn around. They are given little, if any, food or water.
”The conditions are the worst ever seen during the years that the BUAV has been investigating the primate trade,” it said in a report.
”[The animals] were incarcerated individually in rows of small, dark wooden dilapidated crates, poorly constructed with bits of wood nailed together and broken wire,” it said of a market in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha. – Reuters