Cindy-Lou Dale

The international community has long recognized the moral necessity of regulation to protect the rights of animals. Indeed the basic foundation of all laws is to protect those who cannot protect themselves. However, some members of the international community pay only lip service to this basic right. Here is a case point.

 

The last time South Africa reviewed the Animal Protection Act was back in the 60s, but even these antiquated laws are disregarded. The South African Police dismiss them as low priority, as there are far too many other serious crimes to keep them occupied.

 

According to Kevin Hopkins, a senior lecturer of law at Wits University, animals are considered as property and as such have no rights in South Africa. “Animals must have the right to exist, just like we have the right to exist,” says Michele Pickover of South Africans Against Vivisection. “Now there are no rights, they have no dignity, they are here purely for our consumption – and when you have that outlook, animals are going to suffer on a massive scale, as they are now.”

 

Louise van der Merwe of Compassion in World Farming claims the Animal Protection Act doesn’t hold up in court. This claim was made following a battery farming test case which was thrown out of court. The farmer was in clear violation of several laws under the Animals Protection Act as his hens were housed in inadequate space (a space allowance that is smaller than an A4 sheet of paper) and the chickens were maimed --their beaks were burnt off and their toes amputated.

 

There is no law in South Africa that regulates animal experimentation, and the extent of animal testing is hard to establish. “We don’t know how many animals are in laboratories; we don’t know what kind of animals; we don’t know what kind of experiments they are subjected to, because there are no figures,” says Michele Pickover. “It’s deliberately secreted away from society because they don’t want to upset the masses… hidden, like the Nazi concentration camps.”

 

The South African animal food industry also blocks inspection. Animals are frequently struck with sticks or pipes when they are loaded onto or off trucks bound for the abattoirs, some are merely thrown off or pushed, while others get dragged by their heads, skin, tail or ears – which is prohibited by law. Supposedly ‘stunning’ is used at abattoirs throughout South Africa, rendering the animal unconscious before their throats are cut. But in practice many abattoirs use defective equipment.

 

“Animal cruelty is degrading,” says Louise van der Merwe, “it degrades every one of us to allow what is happening to continue. Mammals and birds, like humans, are conscious of their own existence and this probably applies to other animals too. In every way, they are more like us than unlike us. But most importantly they too experience pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, contentment and terror. Many show grief at the loss of someone close to them."

 

Vivisection is the practice of operating and experimenting on living animals, supposedly to gain knowledge of pathological and physiological processes; but what about the being that suffers these experiments? Estimates indicate that between 50- and 200-million animals become research subjects and die in laboratories around the world every year.

 

Here is a small glimpse into this highly secret industry obtained from an informer.

 

The stench was what shocked me every time I entered the room. In the communal cage there were about 30 baboons and vervet monkeys. They were obviously terrified and clambered on top of one another in a back corner, to get away from me. One baboon did not move but sat in place, rocking back and forth. They had no food or water. Near the empty water bowl there was a dead vervet monkey and next to him was another dying monkey and next to him was a dead baboon. Alongside the communal cage were single laboratory cages. They too did not have food or water. Most of these primates moved around wildly in their cramped confines and were clearly distressed. It was all so wrong, so completely abnormal and wholly depraved to confine these wonderful wild apes to tiny 3ft’ x 3ft’ cages.

 

One of the baboons, I secretly named her Sybil, continually peered down the corridor awaiting her inescapable destiny. She had lost all her hair due to stress. When she wasn’t watching the corridor, she would go around and around in her cage. Dibs, her neighbor, was scared and agitated. He suspended himself from the top of his cage for hours on end; that way he could see the trees outside.

 

I wondered how society would react if they could see what I was looking at. For almost a decade this had been their life. All hope lost.

 

The other handlers thundered in, talking loudly to one another. The apes began screaming in terror. They knew something was going to happen, which often meant torturous pain or death. Wire grids were pounded into their cages as they frantically tried to evade the heartless prodding. They were forced into compartments where they were ruthlessly crushed and mildly sedated, in preparation for what was to follow.

 

An ape would have an operation at 10h00 and then he’d be slung back into his cage. The next morning he’d be poked with a steel rod through the bars of his cage until he woke and then he’d be hosed down with a fire hose. No wonder they never survived. The stress was phenomenal. Putting primates in laboratory cages is the most traumatic thing. They were mainly male baboons and they were huge. And all they could do was stand up and sit down. They couldn’t even stretch.

 

·      Experiments in which baboons and vervet monkeys are used include organ transplants, hepatitis, alcohol and tobacco studies, cancer research, heart disease and pharmacological, immunological and psychological research.

·      Baboons are favored by the research industry for use in experimental xenotransplantation (transplanting cells and organs between species). Some of the experiments involve the transplantation of pig hearts onto the necks of baboons. But recently it has been their link to drug giant Novartis, which apparently involves experiments aimed at placing human genes into days-old piglets and then transplanting their hearts into baboons and monkeys.

·      Apes have been used to test weapons such as ‘dum dum’ bullets, designed to inflict maximum injuries rather than to kill their victims.

·      Baboons were also used in the development of ‘heat resistant military clothing’. This experiment entailed shaving the hair off the baboons’ legs, then covering the skin with the material being tested and finally burning it with a blowtorch. All the baboons died as a result of these wounds.

·      Sodium azide is used in the industrial manufacture of explosives and preservatives. When this chemical was administered to baboons, within three to eight minutes of ingesting the poison they would begin having extreme difficulty breathing, their blood pressure would drop and they would lapse into a coma before dying within 30 to 120 minutes.

·      Tests with Brodifacoum, used commercially in rat poison, caused a monkey to bleed to death from the femoral artery.

·      Organophosphates attack the central nervous systems of baboons within eight hours of being applied to a small patch of naked skin. The baboons were subjected to protracted torture, being injected with an antidote, Atropine, at the first sign of poisoning, only to have the toxin reapplied at 24-hour intervals over a period of up to seven days before succumbing to the inevitable.

·      Many of the baboons that were used were trapped in the Kruger National Park and shipped to the laboratory by the crate load. 

 

In this age of democracy and transparency the vivisection industry in South Africa is by far the least so. They are accountable to no one and are shrouded in secrecy. The most recent information available dates back to May 1989 when the South African Journal of Science, quoting from a report by the Animal Ethics Committee, claimed that 2-million animals were being experimented on in laboratories in South Africa every year.

 

Baboons and vervet monkeys have been as big a part of South Africa as blue skies and sunshine. Yet, South Africa’s indigenous primates have long been classified as ‘vermin’, meaning they have no protection. This results in poisonings and trappings or baboons being shot and handed to research laboratories. These activities are authorized by the nature conservation establishment.

 

Vivisection epitomises society’s alienation from other animals. It is a multi-billion dollar global industry sustained and guided by socio-economic factors and powerful institutional pressures, particularly within academia. And because there is so much at stake economically, it is difficult to question it or hold it accountable, let alone dismantle it.

 

“South Africa is in a fortunate position in regard to the supply of primates, which were much sought-after internationally for research purposes, and in this regard various projects were launched jointly with scientists in the USA, France, Austria and Germany.” Testimony from Dr. Dan Goosen, now the deputy chair of the South African Association of Laboratory Animal Scientists (SAALAS), in the state v Wouter Basson, South African High Court, 22 May 2000.

 

“We have no legislation to protect animals in laboratories. The anti-cruelty law loopholes and the encouragement of self-policing ‘ethics’ committees’ means that there is no effective regulation, supervision or debate around the use of animals in biomedical research or testing facilities. Substituting legislation with a voluntary code protects laboratories from public scrutiny. Indeed, the code appears to have been devised to prevent access by people involved in unethical research,” says Michele Pickover of South Africans Against Vivisection.

 

Moreover, what does this say about the democracy of the South African government? People who are cruel to animals have no compunction about being cruel to people. Ironically, photographs of the chacma baboon are employed in promoting tourism but in reality these animals are facing slow eradication and their survival may be hanging in the balance.

 

People for the Abolition of Vivisection (PAV), was founded in 1989 and in 1990 the name was changed to South Africans for the Abolition of Vivisection (SAAV), which advocates empty cages not larger cages.  SAAV contends that animal experiments should be prohibited by law, and it opposes any legislation that does not provide animals with any justice. Michele Pickover is the chairperson of South Africans for the Abolition of Vivisection. E-mail: animals@mail.ngo.za/saav@mail.ngo.za and Website www.saav.org.za

 

Louise van der Merwe is Director of The Humane Education Trust, South African Representative for Compassion in World Farming and Editor of Animal Voice. E-mail: avoice@yebo.co.za and Website: www.animal-voice.org

 

 

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© Cindy-Lou Dale