'Cruel' Trade of Endangered Baboons

N A I R O B I, Oct. 31, 2000 -- A British animal welfare groupsaid today it had exposed a cruel and secretive trade inendangered baboons which were being sold from Tanzania tomedical research organizations in the United States.

The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection said hundreds of Olive Baboons were being trapped and held forweeks in appalling conditions and warned that the trade wasposing a threat to the primates’ future.

“Clearly if the trade continues unregulated then the chanceis they will become even more endangered,” BUAV director ofinvestigations Sarah Kite told Reuters.

Trade in Baboon Meat

The U.N. Convention on International Trade in EndangeredSpecies (CITES) classes Olive Baboons as potentially in dangerof extinction and has strict regulations governing their tradeand shipment.

Primarily found in Tanzania and Kenya, the baboons are alsothreatened by the destruction of their natural habitat as wellas a growing trade in their meat within Africa.

BUAV said it will pass a report of its undercoverinvestigation into the treatment of the baboons on to CITES aswell as to Tanzanian wildlife officials.

According to the report, the baboons are held in rows ofcrates so small they cannot stand up and can barely turn around.They are given little, if any, food or water.

BUAV, which has carried out similar investigations into theprimate trade around the world, said the conditions were so badmany of the Olive Baboons seen in captivity may since have died.

Trapped in Tiny Crates

“The conditions are the worst ever seen during the yearsthat the BUAV has been investigating the primate trade,” it saidin a report.

“[The animals] were incarcerated individually in rows ofsmall, dark wooden dilapidated crates, poorly constructed withbits of wood nailed together and broken wire,” it said of amarket in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha.

“Many peered nervously out of a small piece of wire at thetop of the crate. Others, clearly petrified, cowered and triedto hide as they were approached.”

Kite said the baboons were then shipped to the United Statesin journeys that often lasted three days. While the trade itselfwas not illegal, the conditions in which the animlas were keptwere in breach of CITES rules, BUAV said.

On arrival, the baboons were used in xenotransplantexperiments where they were transplanted with pig organs — someof which contained human genes.

No baboon had ever survived a xenotransplant experiment,Kite said.

Wildlife authorities in neighboring Kenya banned the exportof baboons after a similar exposé in a British newspaper earlierthis year.