1. Help Call for a Suspension on the Import of Endangered Monkeys in Canada

Our thanks to the Animal Party of Canada for the information below along with the opportunity to take action by sending a quick, pre-written letter. It only takes a moment.

The Issue:

In November 2022, after a five-year investigation by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service into the sourcing of monkeys used in research, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Cambodia government officials and nationals for an alleged monkey smuggling ring, and suspended the import of all monkeys from the country. The monkeys – long-tailed macaques – which are listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species, were captured from the wild but misrepresented as bred in captivity.

Since the U.S. suspension, Canadian imports of long-tailed macaques from Cambodia have increased, and over the past 19 months, thousands of the monkeys have been brought into the country.

On Friday, August 9, 2024 the Canadian Transportation Agency denied a landing permit to a cargo plane loaded with long-tailed macaques from Cambodia for apparently being in violation of International Air Transport Association guidelines. The following day, on August 10, the plane landed at the Montreal-Mirabel airport — 48 hours after the animals had been loaded. CITES Canada and the Canadian Wildlife Enforcement Directorate have been contacted to determine what enforcement action will be taken.

Canada is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and should be ordering an immediate suspension of all monkey imports from Cambodia until the issue of illegal trade has been resolved.

How You Can Help:

Please join us in asking the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to follow the lead of the U.S. government and suspend the importation of endangered monkeys from Cambodia.

2. Sign the No Animal Labs at the New St. Paul’s Hospital Petition

Every year, millions of animals in Canada experience excruciating pain and die in the name of research that does not reliably predict human outcomes. Live animals are used for burn research, psychological and physical pain research, given cancer, blinded, subjected to broken bones or strokes, swim tests in icy water, forced to inhale smoke and more. All when alternative ways of conducting research exist and it has been shown time and time again that, in research, animal models produce misleading results. Animal physiology is different to human physiology. For example, 96% of drugs that have tested successfully in animals have failed in human clinical trials.
HELP US TO END ANIMAL RESEARCH: PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION CALLING FOR NO ANIMAL LABS AT THE NEW ST. PAUL’S HOSPITAL IN VANCOUVER...

3. ADAV Petition: Ask Health Canada to Modernize Drug Testing in Canada

Canada has now banned the use of animals in cosmetic testing, and is phasing out toxicological testing of products bought by Canadian consumers.  And in the US, the Food and Drug Administration has dropped the regulatory testing of new drugs on animals.   Yet the development and approval of new pharmaceuticals in Canada still require animal testing be conducted.  

We are urging Health Canada to implement changes to Canada’s drug testing regulations such as the United States has recently adopted through its FDA Modernization Act 2.0.   This Act ends the requirement for the testing of new drugs on animals in favour of sophisticated, human-relevant and reliable evidence methods. 
 
Technical advances in human-relevant testing and research have successfully demonstrated increased efficiency, reliability, cost-effectiveness and environmental sustainability. And with an over 90% failure rate of drugs that pass the initial animal testing phase, human health would only benefit by a complete revamping of our current drug review process.

Institutions such as the Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods at the University of Windsor stand as an example of academic excellence and broader progress in Canadian medical research.   Yet such centres remain underfunded while Canada’s animal use numbers stay high, at over 3,692,479 per year  according to the latest reporting from the Canadian Council on Animal Care.
 

We urge the Canadian Government, Health Canada and our major funding agencies to enact policies that promote health research and testing innovation and which will save millions of animal – and many human – lives each year in Canada. It is essential that we reallocate funding from repetitive animal-testing-based science to the development, validation and implementation of scientifically and morally superior methods.  As a signee of the International Cooperation on Alternative Test Methods (ICATM) in 2009, Health Canada must become proactive in this arena.  Ask Canada to uphold our responsibility to reduce and replace the use of animals in biomedical research, training and testing.

4. African Airline with Ties to a Monkey-Smuggling Ring Ships Animals to their Deaths

PETA has uncovered evidence that Africa’s largest airline, Ethiopian Airlines, has just shipped hundreds of endangered monkeys halfway around the world for use in cruel and deadly experiments.

The airline, which appears to have ties to an alleged illegal international monkey smuggling ring, reportedly recently flew 250 endangered long-tailed macaques from Ethiopia to the U.S. on a grueling journey, even though the company previously told PETA that shipping monkeys was against company policy. The monkeys were first shipped to Ethiopia from the East African nation of Mauritius on a different airline.

Please take action below to urge Ethiopian Airlines to join nearly every other major airline in the world by refusing to ship sensitive beings to laboratories.

7,000-Plus Miles of Misery

Monkeys transported to laboratories are packed into tiny wooden shipping crates and forced to sit in their own feces, urine, and blood for hours-long journeys. The terrified and likely sick animals are ultimately trucked to laboratories, where they’re deprived of food and water, mutilated, poisoned, forcibly immobilized in restraint devices, infected with painful and deadly diseases, psychologically tormented, used in a battery of other excruciating experiments, and ultimately killed.

Frequent Flyer Violator

In July 2023, Ethiopian Airlines was cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for giving a ground crew improper feeding and watering instruction for 336 monkeys crammed inside crates in a cargo hold for the 10,000 miles from Mauritius to Georgia. After the monkeys were finally unloaded from the plane, they spent 95 minutes on the tarmac without shade in 85-degree heat. The crates of monkeys were then roughly handled as workers packed them into trailers for transport to laboratories, causing further distress and likely physical harm.

The USDA also cited the airline in January 2023 for bringing 584 monkeys into the U.S. without mandatory health certificates, which made it impossible to track whether the monkeys carried one or several of a plethora of pathogens that can infect humans.

Numerous Ethiopian Airlines shipments have included monkeys taken from Mauritius, a small island where tuberculosis outbreaks on monkey-breeding farms are well documented. These shipments pose an imminent threat to public health because tuberculosis is highly infectious and can easily be transmitted from monkeys to humans.

Fleet of Frauds

Ethiopian Airlines has ties to a Southeast Asian black market monkey-smuggling ring, which allegedly abducts wild-caught monkeys from their natural habitat and falsely labels them as “captive-bred” before they’re flown to the U.S.

A recent federal trial revealed that Ethiopian Airlines flew hundreds of these allegedly laundered monkeys from Cambodia into the hands of U.S. laboratory supplier Worldwide Primates.

Help Ground All Monkey Shipments

Ethiopian Airlines’ monkey shipments drain forests of endangered monkeys, threaten public health and safety, and fuel the insatiable animal experimentation industry.

Please take action today to urge it to stop shipping monkeys to laboratories for use in cruel and deadly experiments.

After you do that, you’ll see an easy way to share this information. Please ask five friends or relatives to support this campaign!

5. Let’s End Animal Suffering in Cosmetic Testing Across the U.S.

Imagine being a tiny rabbit, guinea pig, mouse, or rat, experiencing unbearable pain for the sake of beauty products like shampoo or mascara. Last week, Washington State made a huge leap forward for compassion by banning the sale of cosmetics tested on these innocent animals. It’s a call to action for the rest of the country: it’s time to stop this unnecessary cruelty.

Sign the petition to urge all U.S. states to follow Washington’s lead!

Animals in labs go through hell — forced to swallow harmful substances, with chemicals burning their eyes or skin, only to be killed in the most inhumane ways. But Washington finally said, “enough,” and became the 12th state to ban such cruelty, joining hands with others who’ve already taken this noble stand.

The truth is, animal testing for cosmetics is outdated and unnecessary. We have better, kinder ways to ensure product safety. Technology now offers us alternatives that spare animal lives and often give us quicker, cheaper, and more accurate results.

Companies big and small are already on board, supporting Washington’s compassionate law. They prove that beauty doesn’t have to come at the cost of animal suffering. And with the majority of the cosmetics industry pushing for change, it’s clear: the time for action is now.

Sign this petition to tell our leaders we want a future where no animal is harmed for the sake of cosmetics. It’s time for every state to ban the sale of cosmetics tested on animals and embrace a kinder, more ethical approach to beauty.

6. Harvard Funding Cruel Monkey Research

We are sad to share the information below from PETA but pleased they offer an opportunity to take action. You can send a pre-written letter with just a few clicks. It only takes a moment.

PETA’s 18-month investigation blew the lid off the Caucaseco Scientific Research Center, the Colombian scam organization that had been propped up with U.S. taxpayer money. But the more we dig, the worse it gets.   Here’s the latest twist: PETA has found that Harvard University is among Caucaseco’s financial backers, and the school refuses to distance itself publicly from the sham operation, despite having every opportunity to do so. Astonishingly, this comes after Colombian officials found fraud in the organization’s science, shuttered its facilities, and rescued the animals—and even after the U.S. National Institutes of Health finally yanked its funding. Harvard has also been silent about Harvard Medical School experimenter Margaret Livingstone, who has sewn baby monkeys’ eyelids shut and left the animals in complete darkness for up to a year in gruesome sensory deprivation experiments.

7. Help End Cruelty to Piglets Used in Military Medical Training

Text from the petition, now closed, captures the issue well. You can still take action on this issue by clicking the “send letter” button below. It only takes a moment.

• Young pigs are poisoned with chemical weapons, irradiated, stabbed, dismembered, disemboweled and killed for Canadian military trauma training;
• The Department of National Defence (DND) continues to use pigs despite acknowledging that they are poor models for human anatomy and may actually interfere with effective training;
• The continued use of piglets for military trauma training puts Canadian soldiers’ lives at risk by using obsolete teaching methods and inapplicable animal models;
• Twenty-three of 30 NATO member nations no longer use animals for military trauma training;
• In the past 10 years, the DND spent over $1 million in tax-payer funds by purchasing pigs for military trauma training; and
• Human patient simulators which accurately mimic human anatomy and physiology are more applicable and cost-effective training tools for military trauma training.

We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the Minister of National Defence to bring an end to the use of animals in military trauma training and replace them with more advanced, human-relevant and less expensive human patient simulators.

8. Stop the Funding of Cruel & Outdated Burn Research on Animals

The BC Professional Fire Fighters’ Burn Fund directly funds burn research on live rabbits and mice in its Wound Healing Research Laboratory led by Dr. Aziz Ghahary.

The BC Fire Fighters have been exposed for cruel animal research before. In the 1990s, animal advocacy organization Lifeforce exposed BC Fire Fighters for funding research which involved burning rats with boiling water. As a result, the BC Fire Fighters promised to pull funding for animal research. However, with the establishment of Dr. Ghahary’s lab in 2005, research on animals has resumed...

9. Only Donate to Medical Charities that do NOT do Research on Animals.

Visit our Humane Charities site to see a list of medical charities that do and do not use animal models. Direct your dollars to those that don’t and if asked for a donation by those that do, let them know why you are not donating. Click the image below to go to the site:

10. Educate Yourself about the Environmental Impacts of Animal Testing

The Progressive Non-Animal Research Society (PNARS) has produced a report about the environmental impact of animal research. Use the button below to see the executive summary and full report.

11. Blow the Whistle: Have You Witnessed Cruelty in an Animal Laboratory?

Email whistleblower@adavsociety.org if you have.