Virginia Senate, House approve bill urging better care for animals used in experiments

Virginia state agencies should release certain animals used in experiments to sanctuaries under a bill that passed the House Monday.

SB 907, introduced by Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Glade Hill, strongly encourages publicly-funded animal testing facilities to offer the release of any previously experimented nonhuman primates, such as baboons, monkeys and macaques, to a certified sanctuary. 

“I believe these animals deserve a chance at a real life, to feel sunshine, grass, a breeze, companionship of their own kind, and freedom to move about,” Stanley wrote in a recent piece for The Virginian-Pilot. “The scientific community recognizes the value of retirement for nonhuman primates too.”

A top official at Eastern Virginia Medical School does not agree.

“These animals are genetically engineered to be in laboratories,” Alfred Abuhamad, dean of EVMS, said in a Senate hearing. “They are accustomed to live in a controlled environment where food is provided to them on a regular basis, their temperature is controlled. Taking the animals out of these environments and into a sanctuary can create significant stress and could actually create more harm than the spirit of the bill is intended to achieve.”

In 2021, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service issued “a critical violation” after the EVMS performed various C-sections on adult female baboons. Two years later, the USDA reported two more violations that failed to follow their own experimental guidelines.  

Daphna Nachminovitch,  senior vice president at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said the organization offered to place those baboons in a sanctuary, but were “completely ignored.” 

“We are neighbors. I can see the university from our building, and they never bothered to respond to our letters or our calls,” Nachminovitch said in an interview. “We put them on notice that these animals matter and they should have some semblance of a life—where they want to sleep, what they want to eat.”

Public records show that EVMS recently ordered seven more baboons for testing at a cost of $82,000. In APHIS’s annual report in 2023, it found the university used a total of 53 macaques and baboons in experiments. According to EVMS’ public records, baboons in the school’s laboratory reveal medical records of partial or full finger amputations, fractured teeth, and various other injuries.  

“Non-human primates, we are only talking about a couple chromosomes away from you and me,” Stanley said. “I think it is important for us as a state, as a policy, to say that if we spend the taxpayer money, hundreds of thousands of dollars on experiments on these baboons and monkeys, that once they are done, try our best to live out the best of their lives.”