Monkeys with a death sentence

Za "Time" from Mauritius and Catalonia

First there is the "La Vanila" nature park. Two thousand crocodiles, turtles, lemurs... a zoo where children can pet the animals. It's not exactly a "nature park" as one might imagine, because there is also a restaurant that offers crocodile steak and a souvenir shop with crocodile skin bags.

Right next door is a mass kennel monkey – both belong to married couple Mary-Anne and Owen Griffiths. Here, in Mauritius, they are among the richest people, so-called oldmoney, families that have been making a fortune since colonial times. Stop are made here of fairy-tale beaches and the turquoise color of the Indian Ocean that attracts tourists. They are made from sugar cane. And they are made from - monkeys.

Because macaques are a sought-after commodity for biochemical and toxicological experiments all over the world. For them, the cage is something like a death sentence cell. But first comes the torture. Finally, the dead monkeys are cremated. The work takes place away from the public eye because many experiments could be done without animals.

So it's a small wonder that Biokultura, a corporation belonging to the Griffiths, still allows reporters to tour the kennel. All other firms to be mentioned here have ignored the inquiries.

photo: natalie bertrams

LOADED CAGES

Nada Padajaci is the manager here. He and his colleagues talk in their own slang about "breeding colonies" where cubs are separated from their mothers, and other blocks of cages they call "growing areas". They say, from there they choose what the client needs - some want larger specimens, some only those that they eat out of their hands.

Bioculture in all locations keeps about 30.000 macaques. Every year, 7.000 are born, and another 1.500 wild monkeys are brought from thousands of traps around the island. If the traps are on private land, the company pays the owner about $200 per female caught. Males are rarely taken, unless they are "alphas, good for breeding", says Padajaci.

His company and others say that macaques are an invasive species on Mauritius, an island about a thousand kilometers from Madagascar, that there are too many of them anyway, and that animal welfare is their "philosophy." But who controls this great ape welfare? "The only control is through the industry itself," says Padajaci bluntly.

An hour's drive from there, a man in a gray T-shirt welcomes us on his veranda. A tattoo of the god Shiva peeks out from under the sleeve on the right arm. He does not want his name published, and for good reason. For a year and a half, he worked for Noveprim, another large monkey breeder. As his wife brings out slices of mango and papaya, he tells us that he cared for macaques in twelve cages, each holding 60 or 70 animals, almost twice the capacity.

"Every morning we counted - newborns, injured, dead... it takes about half an hour," he says. Then comes cleaning, food, disinfection. There are two dominant males in the cage, the rest are females and young. When they are about eight months old, the cubs are separated and prepared for export. "Then their mothers sit in a corner and stop eating."

He and his colleagues wore brown uniforms, while the vets wore blue. "As soon as they see blue," says this man, "the macaques become aggressive. They jump here and there, shake the bars." Because blue means tuberculosis tests, blood sampling and more. Sometimes the animals themselves are not exported, but their blood, plasma, tissue.

When our interlocutor came to work in the morning, he would find new monkeys in cages, those caught in traps. "You see - five pieces more. And they all look the same." He was surprised because, officially, from 2022, only animals born in captivity in the third generation may be used in experiments in the European Union. But who is to control that?!

When he talked about it with his superiors, they told him he had better stay out of trouble. He became a kind of whistleblower and today he works renting cars to tourists near the airport.

photo: natalie bertrams

WORLDWIDE NETWORK

In the meantime, the company Noveprim was sold to the American Charles River Laboratories International (CRLI), which annually records about 240 million dollars in profits from the work with experimental animals. How extensive their network is can be seen on the other side of the world, in Catalonia.

Olive groves on scorched earth and generations of stone walls would be a typical Mediterranean scene. But here, a two-hour drive from Barcelona, ​​they also serve as a backdrop behind which are the cages. Monkeys can be heard as soon as a person approaches, and then they can be seen. One arm tries in vain to reach a palm leaf through the bars. Four security guards are already coming, asking us not to film, threatening the police.

The place is called Kamarni and it is not only a testing center but also a kind of warehouse. The goods are about 3.600 monkeys packed in cages. They are sold from Spain to pharmaceutical companies and scientific institutions throughout Europe.

Crustacean macaques are a tiny, long-tailed species. They weigh from 2,5 to 8,3 kilograms. They are intelligent enough to use tools. In Thailand or Indonesia, they entertain tourists and bore them by stealing food or other things that they will return in exchange for food.

The oldest found fossil of this monkey is a million years old. They are believed to have been brought from Southeast Asia to Mauritius in the early 17th century by Dutch sailors, probably as pets. Although they easily adapt to urban conditions, in the last three decades the population has been cut in half, which allegedly makes macaques an endangered species.

That assessment is presented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which adds that macaques are crustaceans "the most commonly traded primate species and are in high demand for biomedical and toxicological testing." Official data alone say that in 2024, more than forty thousand individuals were sold worldwide.

EXTINCTION FOR THE GOOD OF NATURE?

A U.S. lobby group, the National Association for Biomedical Research, sharply criticized the Conservation Union's assessment. In this lobby, representatives of CRLI and even larger companies, some of which turn over tens of billions of dollars a year in the field of biochemical research, have the main say.

In 2020, China suspended the export of long-tailed macaques, a similar thing happened to Cambodia after a smuggling scandal. Mauritius jumped into the gap, which today exports about fifteen thousand monkeys a year - three quarters to the United States, almost all the rest to Europe. The price of monkeys has exploded - they can cost as much as seven thousand dollars per individual.

The industry says that Mauritius is one of only a few places in the world where these primates can be caught "ethically" because they are an invasive species. Vincent Florence should know the most about it on the whole island. At the University of Mauritius, in the capital Port Louis, environmentalist Florence is surrounded by jars of specimens and pictures of macaques, rats and the guava plant sometimes called the Brazilian strawberry. These, he says, are the three key intruders in Mauritius.

"Macaques adapt easily, they can eat anything," says the scientist. Ebony fruits before they ripen, orchids, other young plants. "So they are predators because herbivores are predators in a way. But here they feed in a way that other animals and plants are not adapted to. The diet of macaques leads to the decline of other species."

For Florence, it is the most logical thing in the world - whoever wants to preserve the diversity of the living world of Mauritius, should eradicate invasive plants, and then rats and macaques. "If you exterminate the macaques completely, then you've got rid of the threat forever. If you don't exterminate them, the threat will hang like the sword of Damocles. The population can grow again."

Thus, in a strange way, a distinguished scientist became an ally of large corporations. Because relocating monkeys is not realistic, and mass killing would bring the people to their feet. The only thing left is to catch traps.

The catch is that it would never suit the monkey-trading companies to run out of goods. When we asked Biokultur whether it is advocating for the extermination of the species, when it already claims that it is a threat, they stated: "It is not our place to have a judgment or position on that."

photo: natalie bertrams

PEOPLE FEED MONKEYS

Raphael Reinegger, a researcher at the University of Bristol who has been tracking the decline of macaque populations, points out the nuances here. Because the population is densest where people accidentally feed the monkeys - around the sugar cane plantations that cover about a fifth of the island or the hunting grounds of the inhabited deer that people feed.

That's why Reinegger sees only an excuse in setting traps, ostensibly for population control. "Macaques start to avoid traps, they are not stupid animals. The breeders know that." For population control, it would be more convenient, he says, to fence off the sugar cane with electric wire or ropes with chili paste that scares the macaques. And that deer eat something that monkeys don't like.

"Actually, it is in the interest of macaque breeders that the population remains stable," he concludes. Because reproduction always requires fresh blood. Even the 30.000 macaques that Biokultura keeps in cages are not enough to maintain the population without new ones from the wild.

Vincent Florence, an environmentalist, is not a cold person and he doesn't really care when he talks about macaques as a pest that should be exterminated. He switched to a meat-free diet precisely because he felt sorry for animals. And about the tests on macaques, he says that they are cruel. "They should definitely be avoided when possible," he believes, "but we don't live in an ideal world."

This is also the crowning argument of companies that live off monkeys: if their suffering and death lead to discoveries that later save millions of human lives, then the matter is unpleasant, but completely correct. But is it really so?

OUTDATED METHODS

Thomas Hartung teaches toxicology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He is the doyen of non-animal experiments. Three decades ago, he came up with a way to test substances that cause fever. He says that, without that system, around 170.000 rabbits per year would have died in tests in Europe alone.

And today the progress is fascinating, says the professor. For example, artificial intelligence can be used to simulate control groups of macaques, those that do not receive any medication. The technology with microchips makes it possible to grow cells of the human brain, liver, lungs, and heart, so that the effect of substances on the organs can be seen.

Pride, Hardung says, is better because the drugs are made for humans, not monkeys. "We are simply not 70-kilogram macaques," adds this scientist.

"Studies on mice and rats appeared when I wasn't even born, and today I'm 62 years old. It's very unusual that something in the field of science is done exactly the same as six decades ago. But with toxicological testing, it's really like that," he criticizes.

However, things are slowly changing. In April of last year, the US Food and Drug Administration, a powerful regulator whose decisions affect the entire world because they also affect imports into the US, decided to gradually make it more difficult and ban animal testing. It starts with monoclonal antibodies, and it is precisely in this field that macaques are used the most. An average of 144 monkeys die in one antibody testing project. If the US regulator sticks to the plan, animal testing will be the exception rather than the rule in the next five years.

Similar plans are announced by the European Union and Great Britain. India abolished animal testing three years ago and recognized many modern methods by law. "The trend is clear," says Hartung. "The science has developed, and there is political will because people just don't want animal testing. I really think we should accelerate that development."

photo: natalie bertrams

GODS AMONG US

And the monkeys in Mauritius? If they are no longer commodities, will they be put on the cull list?

Not if Aira (47) is wondering. She lives in the village of Creve Coeur, not far from Port Louis. As it pours a small rain, it shows the neighbor's land on which there are traps, small and large. Some are on the roofs, some under the mango tree that the macaques adore. Aira has seen macaques fall into the trap many times. He says they are crying like babies.

Not far from there is a miniature temple with a figurine of the god Hanuman, one of the favorite Hindu deities. Hanuman is most often depicted with the head and tail of a monkey. About half of the island's 1,2 million inhabitants are very religious. Any major crackdown on the ape population would be met with resistance.

"For us, these monkeys are connected to God. We don't like it when people catch them and sell them for experiments," says Ayra. And he also says that monkeys were created before humans existed on Earth. The planet is more ape than human.

*The research work on this article was supported by Network Research/Olin GmbH i Journalismfund Europe

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