Nature News Blog
08 Jan 2013 | 20:57 GMT | Posted by Meredith Wadman | Category: Biology & Biotechnology ,
Health and medicine , Lab life , Policy
Protestors at the Chicago offices of United Airlines in May 2012.
PETA
United Airlines, the world’s largest carrier, will no longer ship non-human primates to research labs. Clarifying a policy that has been ambiguous since it merged with Continental Airlines in
2010, the airline today issued this statement: “We do not book, accept or transport non-human primates to or from medical research facilities domestically or internationally. We do ship nonhuman primates between zoos and sanctuaries within the 50 United States and Puerto Rico.”
With the adoption of similar rules by Air Canada last month (see ‘Air Canada to stop transporting research primates’
), there are no longer any North American carriers that will move the thousands of primates that are imported each year to the United States and Canada (see
‘Activists ground primate flights’ ). The number of major airlines that say they fly research primates has now dwindled to four: Air France, China Eastern Airlines, Philippine Airlines and
Vietnam Airlines.
United has been under pressure from activists with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
(PETA), which launched a campaign after the merger, demanding that the merged airline explicitly adopt a policy banning research primate transport. Before the merger, Continental transported research primates; United did not. PETA says that its supporters sent 130,000 protest e-mails to the carrier and demonstrated at its office in Sydney, Australia, and at its Chicago headquarters.
The announcement marks an about face from a fiercely pro-research stance that a United official published on the website of the Animal Transportation Association in September 2011. It

challenges other airlines to review their policies forbidding research primate transport. It reads, in part:
Virtually every major medical advance of the last century has depended upon research with animals … I know that the greater good of mankind can be served by our assisting this industry in the transport of these animals.
Lisa Schoppa, the author of the statement and then the manager of United’s PetSafe programme, has since left the company. A United spokeswoman would not say when and why she left.
Nature News Blog
20 Dec 2012 | 23:01 GMT | Posted by Meredith Wadman | Category: Biology & Biotechnology ,
Health and medicine , Policy
BUAV
Air Canada, one of the few major airline companies that still transports primates for research, was given the go-ahead to stop moving macaques and other non-human primates bound for research labs, after a decision today from its regulatory agency, the Canadian Transportation
Agency (CTA). The airline applauded the decision and said that, effective December 22, it will require all non-human primate shippers to sign a declaration that the animals are not intended for research or experiments.
The airline tried to abandon research primate transport more than a year ago, after the British
Union Against Vivisection publicized the airline’s movement of monkeys
from China to Canada.
But Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, and the Public Health Agency of Canada both filed complaints with the CTA, arguing that the proposed policy change was discriminatory and unjust. Today, the CTA disagreed, freeing the airline to remove itself from the dwindling list of passenger carriers that still transport lab-bound primates, such as the long-tailed macaques pictured here in a cargo hold en route to a European lab. The remaining primate-transporting carriers include Air France and United Airlines.

( Nature took a close look at this issue earlier this year, in “ Activists ground primate flights
“. We also examined the pressure that activists are bringing to bear on cargo carriers such as UPS and
FedEx, in “ Lab animal flights squeezed “.)
The CTA decision says that Air Canada’s proposed new policy would not be discriminatory, because it would apply to all shippers, not just Queen’s University, or groups like them.
Admittedly, the agency writes, the rule change is bound to affect certain shippers, like research universities, adversely compared to others. But it says the airline has a “rational basis” for the proposed change: continuing to transport lab-bound primates could hurt Air Canada’s reputation and commercial interests.
Martin Pare, a professor at the Centre for Neuroscience Studies at Queen’s University, says he is
“shocked” by the transportation agency’s decision. With available airline carriers dwindling, he says, obtaining research primates could become a problem in Canada, which lacks a breeding colony of macaques. Canadian scientists may now need to discuss establishing such a colony, says Pare, who uses Rhesus macaques to examine side effects of drugs such as Ritalin.
Animal activists celebrated the decision. ”The public can [now] book Air Canada flights with a clear conscience,” says Justin Goodman, director of the laboratory investigations department at
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in Washington DC. (The group was granted
“interested person” status in the complaint, and nearly 19,000 people signed a PETA petition lobbying the CTA to allow Air Canada to change its policy.)
Goodman says his organization will continue to focus its campaign on United Airlines. United’s global media relations unit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Supply of research monkeys to Western labs under threat as airlines react to animal-rights campaign.

Protesters make their mark at an Animal Transportation Association meeting in Vancouver on 18
March.
Christopher J. Morris/AP
Each year, thousands of macaques and other monkeys are flown into Europe and North America to supply academic and industrial research labs — more than 18,000 to the United States in 2011 alone. But in a campaign that could affect scientists across the West, the few major air carriers that still transport non-human primates are coming under unprecedented pressure to halt the practice.
One key route under threat is from China, which last year shipped more than 70% of the research primates sent to the United States (see
‘Up in the air’
). On 14 March, animal breeders in China met with officials of China Southern Airlines to implore them to resume flights into Los Angeles
International Airport, the largest US port of entry for research primates. Last August, China
Southern cancelled a shipment from Guangzhou of 80 crab-eating macaques ( Macaca fascicularis ) destined for Los Angeles, after a social media, e-mail and telephone campaign by pressure group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), based in Norfolk, Virginia.
China Southern has not flown research primates into Los Angeles since then.

Expand
Source: PETA/FWS
“This was part of our larger campaign to disrupt the flow of primates to US labs,” says Justin
Goodman, associate director of the laboratory investigations department at PETA in Washington
DC. The group complains that imports are supplementing an already-burgeoning primate population in US labs (see
‘Frequent flyers’
).
Two other airlines are also in the public spotlight. Air France faces mounting pressure as the last major European carrier to transport research primates. And Air Canada is petitioning the
Canadian Transportation Agency, the body that regulates Canadian air carriers, for the required permission to refuse to transport research primates in the future. With news breaking last week that ferry companies have entirely ceased transporting all research animals — including sophisticated mouse disease models — into the United Kingdom, researchers fear that this is the start of a larger trend.
Michael Hsu, president of animal-breeding company Shared Enterprises in Richlandtown,
Pennsylvania, says that activism is affecting companies such as his, which maintains a macaque breeding colony in Shanghai and relies on flights into Los Angeles to get its animals to its clients. China Southern, he says, was easily the biggest carrier serving Los Angeles airport. The other Chinese carriers serving the United States — Air China and China Eastern — have lower capacity, creating a bottleneck for breeders lining up to ship animals. The situation, says Hsu, “is causing a big backlog. It’s costing us money. We’ve been producing these animals for these markets, and if we can’t ship them, it’s very difficult for us to sustain them.”

Expand
Source: AAVS/FWS/USDA
Breeding the animals in the United States instead would be problematic: infrastructure and labour costs are much higher than they are in Asia, and colonies are much more likely to become the targets of animal activists. And moving the animals by sea is a non-starter because of the deleterious effects of the six-week trans-Pacific journey on the animals’ health.
Martin Paré, an associate professor at the Centre for Neuroscience Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, worries not only about his own access to primates, but about a slipperyslope effect. “If Air Canada was permitted to stop transporting non-human primates, what would be next? Stopping all animal transportation for research, which is what’s happening in the UK?”
Many airlines, including Lufthansa, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, already refuse to carry research primates. In fact, the China Southern shutdown at Los Angeles resulted in part from
PETA putting pressure on Lufthansa, which unloads planes for China Southern at the airport.
Activists pointed out to Lufthansa that unloading research primates for the Chinese carrier was at odds with its policy on the transport of non-human primates. Within 24 hours, the China
Southern macaque shipment was cancelled. Goodman speculates that “Lufthansa was anticipating a really bad PR situation”. Lufthansa says that it cannot comment on matters involving another carrier.
At the time that it merged with United Airlines in 2010, Continental Airlines was the last remaining US carrier that still transported research primates. United is preparing to publish a policy for the merged airline later this year.
 Chimp research under scrutiny
 Breeding contempt
 Lab bred chimps despite ban

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“Nearly every major airline rejects the transport of primates to laboratories,” says Goodman.
“The handful that are still doing it are facing more intense opposition and scrutiny than they ever have before. Because it’s not in their best interest to continue doing so, I am sure that they will stop.”
The next several months could prove crucial. After last week’s meeting, China Southern is still deciding whether it will resume transporting research primates through Los Angeles. If Air
Canada’s petition to stop shipping primates is successful, Canadian researchers would be inconvenienced, but not entirely cut off — around 1,700 non-human primates were imported from the United States last year, mostly driven across the border. The Public Health Agency of
Canada and Queen’s University are challenging the airline’s move, and a decision from the transportation agency is expected later this year.
“The research that Queen’s University performs has significant benefits for the health and welfare of Canadians,” says Steven Liss, the university’s vice-principal for research. He adds that the humane treatment of the animals is “always” the university’s priority. “Air travel is simply the fastest and least stressful way of transporting them.”
Air France issued a statement last September declaring that “nothing allows the airline to decide on the merits of the use of animals in biomedical research”, which it called “important and scientifically justified”. Nonetheless, after it was bombarded with PETA-orchestrated e-mails, phone calls and Facebook postings, the airline cancelled a scheduled 1 February shipment from Mauritius of 60 monkeys bound for a private laboratory in Everett, Washington.
The apparent success of the public campaign has alarmed breeders, importers and biomedical researchers. “It’s unfortunate that some airlines have chosen to capitulate to a small number of individuals with an agenda who aren’t truly representative of the general public,” says Matthew
Bailey, vice-president of the National Association for Biomedical Research in Washington DC, a trade organization that lobbies on lab-animal policy for drug firms and research universities.
“More and more scientists will go elsewhere to do primate research.”
Tipu Aziz, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of Oxford, UK, has used macaques to study Parkinson’s disease. He believes that restricting transport of animals will not have the desired effect. “My gut feeling is that more and more scientists will go elsewhere to do primate research,” he says. “I have no qualms about going abroad to do my work. There are quite a few countries that have good facilities: there are centres in India, Singapore, Malaysia, China.”
Others say that the drug industry — a major user of research primates — may also be inclined to relocate activities if the flight barrier becomes insurmountable.
“Let’s say [the activists] get their wish and no animal comes into the United States,” Hsu argues.
“Merck is not going to say: ‘Okay, fine.’ They are going to go to other countries where animal care might not be as good, and start doing research there.”

Still, expert observers say that the pressure on the airlines is significant. “The public tide is turning against the use of non-human primates in general, and researchers must either find alternatives or convince the public there is a compelling reason to continue such research,” says
Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, which is home to the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. If scientists don’t make a louder, more persuasive public case, he says, “more companies — not only in transportation — will choose the side of animal-rights advocates”.