From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:

SAN FRANCISCO–The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on
November 22, 2006 reinstated a lawsuit seeking to compel the USDA to
adopt guidelines governing primate care in zoos and laboratories.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund, Animal Welfare Institute,
and three individuals filed the case in 2003, after the USDA refused
to implement regulations which would have required non-human primates
to be housed in social groups, and be given toys to provide mental
stimulation.
The lawsuit alleges that the USDA violated the intent of
Congress in passing 1985 amendments to the federal Animal Welfare Act
that recognized the social nature and intelligence of dogs and
nonhuman primates. The case was dismissed by a federal district
court, but the Court of Appeals sent it back for further review.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:
ATLANTA–“The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
has spent $3 million on animal care improvements since last year,”
Associated Press medical writer Mike Stobbe reported on November 16,
2006, after the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of
Laboratory Care International “threatened to revoke its approval for
the way the CDC treats lab animals.”
Among other violations of AALAC standards, Stobbe wrote,
“Faulty sipper tubes left some monkeys with no access to water,
leading to the dehydration death of an owl monkey and a rhesus monkey
in 2004. A rhesus monkey was mistakenly killed in 2005 because of
record-keeping and communications problems. Three rhesus monkeys
were given a deadly combination of anesthetic and analgesic
medications. The doses were consistent with published guidelines,
but killed the monkeys, leading to the CDC adopting new standards.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:

PORTLAND, Ore.–Matt Rossell, Portland representative for
In Defense of Animals, on December 21, 2006 confirmed that he had
at last received 113,000 pages of Oregon National Primate Research
Center monkey care records, eight years after he first applied to
obtain them in 1998, during a two-year stint as a center employee.
The center is operated by Oregon Health & Science University.
After the university refused to provide the records, Rossell and IDA
sued to get them in 2001. The Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in April
2005 that Rossell and IDA had a right to obtain copies, and that a
copying charge of more than $150,000 proposed by the university was
excessive. However, the court allowed the university to black out
the names of individual researchers and animal caretakers.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2006:
SAN ANTONIO–Seven chimpanzees who were at the center of
recent PETA allegations against the Primarily Primates sanctuary were
on November 16 relocated to Chimp Haven, in Keithville, Louisiana,
near Shreveport.
“The move sparked a rush of high emotion outside the
sanctuary,” summarized Jordan Smith of the Austin Chronicle, as
neither Primarily Primates senior staff nor the Primarily Primates
attorneys had been told that the chimps were to be moved.
Opened in October 2005, after 10 years of fundraising and
construction, the $14 million Chimp Haven complex houses 84 former
lab chimps in all, mostly under a contract from the National
Endowments of Health which allows the NIH to reclaim chimps for
further study if at any time they develop a medically interesting
condition or for any other reason are again wanted for lab use.
Not accredited by either the American Sanctuary Association
or the Association of Sanctuaries, Chimp Haven was itself intensely
controversial in January 2002, when ANIMAL PEOPLE explored the
debate about it. But it was Ohio State University researcher Sally
Boysen’s destination of choice for her nine chimps after OSU quit
funding their care–and the destination of choice for PETA, to whom
Boysen appealed for help when OSU sent the chimps to Primarily
Primates instead, along with $324,000 for their housing and $72,000
for their upkeep. The funding is to follow the chimps wherever they
end up, said OSU spokesperson Earle Holland.

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