India’s rhesus macaques under threat from “foreign animal experimenters”: PETA

India’s rhesus macaque faces an imminent threat from foreign animal experimenters, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have said in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking to reinstate a 50-year-old protection given to this indigenous species in the law. 

Removing rhesus macaques from the Wild Life Protection Act (WPA) through the 2022 amendment “opens the floodgates” to capture these monkeys and export them, Ankita Pandey, a scientist with PETA India, told businessline.  

Their letter urges the PM to direct the appropriate ministry “to reinstate the rhesus macaques as a species protected under the WPA and grant them the highest protection afforded to numerous other indigenous species under Schedule I,”

Just weeks ago, Sri Lanka reportedly scrapped its plan to export one lakh endangered toque macaque monkeys to China, after petitioners went to Court against the proposal. Conservationists apprehended, the monkeys would land up in labs, a foreign media report said.

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Expressing concern over the removal of safeguards for the rhesus macaques under the WPA (1972), PETA said, protecting them would safeguard animal welfare, local ecosystems, and human health. The letter pointed out, the monkeys could be used “in painful, archaic experiments; kept as “pets”; slaughtered for meat; forced to perform; or even just killed for no good reason.”

Several decades ago, the Indian rhesus macaque population saw a staggering 90 per cent decline, “and we worry India may face a similar loss again if protection of this species is not reinstated,” it added. This was concerning, as rhesus macaques help local ecosystems by dispersing seeds – due to their mostly fruit-based diet – and their absence can be detrimental to forests, PETA added.

Zoonotic diseases

The letter warns of evidence “that unscrupulous foreign monkey importers are hoping to pillage India’s rhesus macaque population.” It cited an office memorandum by the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) in May 2022, that highlighted possible attempts by a foreign company to export live monkeys from India.

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“Monkeys taken from their natural habitats by international wildlife dealers are often crammed into small wooden crates and transported in dark, terrifying cargo holds of planes for as long as 30 hours. The stress of capture and transportation can weaken their immune systems and risks the spread of zoonotic diseases in India and around the world. In laboratories, monkeys are typically confined alone to small metal cages and tormented in experiments in which they’re cut open, poisoned, crippled, addicted to drugs, electroshocked, and killed,” PETA said.

Harm outweighs benefits

Animal experiments fail to yield meaningful treatments and vaccines for humans, the letter to the PM said. In fact, “95 per cent of new drugs that appear safe and effective in animals don’t work or cause adverse reactions in human clinical trials. Even the former director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) admitted that testing on animals hasn’t worked ….Another NIH director emphasised the promise of new alternative technology, stating “new alternatives like tissue chips, that reproduce human biology in a much more physiologically complex way, remove this requirement for animal testing data.” 

Recognising this, the US Congress passed the FDA Modernisation Act 2.0, which eliminated the requirement for testing new drugs on animals, the letter said, adding that the harms outweighed any possible benefits of removing protection for these monkeys.  

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