Every year, more than 10,000 macaque monkeys are born and kept in tiny, overcrowded cages in countries like China, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Born in captivity or kidnapped from the wild, the macaques live a life deprived of love and care, and are then sold to laboratories to be experimented on. Many die as a result.
Source: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals
Photojournalist Jo-Anne McArthur visited 3 of these 'farms' undercover in Laos in 2011, and recorded the horrifying things she saw. McArthur toldThe Dodo website about her visits to these farms, accompanied by Polish film director Karol Orzechowski:
We had this story. We said that Karol was buying them for labs, and he was also buying them for people who wanted to buy them for entertainment. We also said that the reason we wanted to shoot on their property was to see if they were being housed in good conditions, and to take [this information] back to our clients in the U.S.
To Jo-Anne and Karol, each farm seemed even worse than the last:
These animals are basically just being kept alive. They’re not getting much food, and there’s a hierarchy in each cage. So the older monkeys get all the food, and the younger ones are left to scramble and fend for themselves. So there’s a lot of starvation in these cages. Some of them are really young, and they’re plucking around the floor for food. You see animals with injuries — bloody faces, blindness.
Source: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals
McArthur was particularly disturbed by a mother and her young baby being shown off like they were products to be inspected, rather than living, sentient animals:
He [the man] was literally showing us his ‘product’. He opened her mouth to show that her teeth were good, and then did the same thing with her eyes. And when he picked her up, the baby latched onto the mother. It was just heartbreaking. The baby had an expression of obvious terror.
Source: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals
If these poor animals escape this terrible place, what waits for them is even worse. Most of them end their lives in laboratories, after being put through all kinds of tests and experiments. Theodora Capaldo, director of theNew England Anti-Vivisection Society(NEAVS), explains:
For example, primates will be used in toxicity testing where animals are given high doses of a new chemical or a new product until 50 percent of them die. Or an airplane oxygen mask will be secured to their heads, and they’ll be forced to inhale toxic substances. Then they would be killed and their lungs would be examined.
Those that survive are usually euthanized when the study ends. A lucky few make it to animal sanctuaries, but they can't cope with the thousands who enter the industry every year.These animals live a short, difficult life, confined in a minuscule cage before being slowly poisoned. This is the reality facing thousands of monkeys, who at this moment suffer in American and European laboratories.
Source: Cruelty Free International
To learn more about Jo-Anne McArthur's project on animals in human environments, you can visit her website. Karol Orzechowski has made a film about laboratory animals, Maximum Tolerated Dose, which includes her experience in Laos.To add your voice to the many who are speaking out against animal testing, you can write to your representatives, or the NIH, and sign this petition asking Air France to stop transporting animals used in laboratories. You can learn more about campaigning at Cruelty Free International.
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