Oregon National Primate Research Center - Investigation By Animal Rights Groups

Investigation By Animal Rights Groups

Animal rights groups have conducted two undercover investigations into living conditions for the primates at the center. In 2000, Matt Rossell, an animal rights activist, posed as a laboratory technician, then released video footage taken from inside the center. He accused the facility of violating federal laws and ignoring signs of distress among the rhesus monkeys housed there. Jane Goodall, the primatologist, described the video as showing:

a baby monkey rolling up into a ball and sucking his penis, an infant monkey with Shigella crawling about in his own filth, an adult rhesus who was so crazy that he had bitten his arms, bitten off almost all the flesh, an individual capuchin who had been used in drug research sitting with staring eyes, clearly in the last stages of depression, a monkey strapped down and submitted to a horribly painful electro ejaculation process with electrodes strapped on his penis, just to get a semen sample ...

The center described the allegations as "a combination of misinformation and misleading images." After an investigation, the USDA cleared the ONPRC of any wrongdoing, saying "the charges were a combination of misinformation and misleading images."

Goodall insists that the images could not have been faked, and that the monkeys were being "tortured." She told Matt Rossell: "There's absolutely no question that when non-human primates are put into the tiny, barren, sterile cages that are typical of almost all medical research facilities - such as those at the Oregon Regional Primate Center - they suffer most terribly. They suffer from boredom. They suffer terribly from being kept in isolation from others of their kind because monkeys and apes are extremely social, and they suffer from depression. The same kind of clinical symptoms that a depressed human child shows are seen in many instances in monkeys and chimpanzees kept in these inhumane and shocking conditions ... When I first saw the video, I was shocked, I was horrified, and I was very, very angry."

A second, four-month, undercover investigation was conducted in 2007 by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's president, said the footage showed the primates living in "miserable conditions." A spokesman for the center said the behavior of the monkeys seen in the footage was attributable to the investigator creating an "unfamiliar environment" for them.