Israeli laboratory monkey breeder is believed likely to close

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2013:

 TEL AVIV––The Israeli laboratory monkey supplier Mazor Farm “is expected to close down in two years,” Ilian Lior of Haaretz reported on January 6, 2013, “following environmental protection minister Gilad Erdan’s decision to ban the export of animals born in the wild for experimentation.

Since Israeli research institutions need only a few dozen monkeys a year,” Lior wrote, “the Mazor farm will no longer be economically viable. It is therefore expected to close after a two-year transition period.” Wrote Erdan in December 2012 to Israeli attorney general Yehuda Weinstein, “I intend to ban the import of wild animals by intermediaries who breed and then export them to other countries,” for “moral, ideological, and educational” reasons, “intended mainly to reduce the animals’ suffering and the harm caused to them.”

Weinstein agreed to to ban the export of wild-caught animals for experimentation, but allowed Mazor Farm to continue sell monkeys for lab use within in Israel, and to also continue exporting captive-bred monkeys. But Mazor Farms is not expected to be able to maintain an economically competitive monkey breeding business, amid indications that global demand for monkeys may be contracting. British Union Against Vivisection director Sarah Kite in October 2012 released to media photos of large numbers of monkeys––possibly hundreds––who were allegedly killed by lethal injection at the Noveprim breeding farm in Mauritius, after growing beyond the optimum size for housing in standard laboratory cages.

The BUAV alleged that Noveprim has also killed pregnant monkeys and baby monkeys for whom there were no buyers. Noveprim has in the past exported as many as 10,000 monkeys per year to labs in the U.S., Britain, and Spain. Suppliers in Mauritius sold 3,011 monkeys to U.S. labs in 2011, second only to Chinese suppliers, who sold 12,636 monkeys to U.S. customers, according to U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service documentation obtained by the International Primate Protection League. The BUAV disclosures came about three months after Administrative Tribunal Judge Elizabeth Lozzi Claudia Moreno, of Cundinmarca, Colombia, revoked a permit to capture up to 4,000 night monkeys, which had been issued to lab supplier Manuel Elkin Pataroyo by the Colombian Ministry of Environment and the Corporation for

Sustainable Development of Southern Amazonia, even though Patrroyo reportedly had a history of infringing wildlife protection laws in Colombia and Cambodia dating back to 1984. The Patrroyo case was brought to court by wild monkey researcher Angela Maldonado, of Fundacio Entropika, with investigative help from Animal Defenders International and publicity support from Kinship Circle.

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