Join the Animal Legal Defense Fund and an international coalition of attorneys, scientists, and animal advocates in opposing the proposed construction of a massive facility in Puerto Rico for the purpose of breeding primates for use in painful and traumatic laboratory experiments.The proposed facility in Guayama City will, according to plans, breed many thousands of highly intelligent, sensitive macaques for export to research facilities in the United States and around the world, and potentially for on-site and/or local experimentation as well.
Let Puerto Rican officials know you are part of the international opposition to this cruel plan!
Less than one year ago, Puerto Rico enacted a landmark animal protection law, based in part on a set of model laws drafted by the Animal Legal Defense Fund. The sweeping set of reforms provided for in Act 154 (P S. 2552) place Puerto Rico among the top tier of U.S. states and jurisdictions with regards to the strength of their laws protecting animals. This new law provides specific guidelines for experimentation on live animals: specifically, scientific research on animals at universities is allowable only when it meets criteria deeming it “absolutely essential;” any other experiments are prohibited for educational purposes at the elementary, intermediate and higher education levels, and completely banned in facilities outside of university research labs. The proposed primate breeding facility would violate both the letter and the spirit of Puerto Rico’s progressive new law, which strictly limits the use of animals in experimentation.
In addition to troubling questions about its legality, such a facility would also place Puerto Rico behind the curve in the current context of scientific debate about laboratory research involving live animals. In 2007, the National Academy of Sciences published a report calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to make a fundamental shift in its toxicity testing strategies away from testing on mammals and focusing increasingly on new, more accurate—not to mention, more ethical—in vitro toxicity testing.
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Here you can sign ALDF's letter to Puerto Rican officials asking them to stop the construction of this facility. Please sign! http://aldf.org/puertorico
1 comment:
Tom- I apologize for posting this under an unrelated post, but I don't know how far back you read the comments. As a former resident of Barceloneta I am very interested in the Municipal law banning animals. As I read it the law seems like the kind designed to be selectively enforced at the whim of the alcalde. Is that probable? Particularly in areas near the coast the boundary between urbanization and campo is pretty vague.... can this apply to people who have lived in these outlying urbs since the 1960s??
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