Animal Defenders International (ADI) seem to be riding high. This organisation is the international campaigning wing of the National AntiVivisection Society. Their autumn 2007 newsletter just dropped through our letterbox with the claim that the European parliament has ‘set a historic target to end experiments on primates’. This is described as ‘the single most important breakthrough in over a decade’.

We’ll see about that.

The case for the use of non-human primates in research is well made in a Guardian ‘Comment is Free’ blog article today, and is otherwise well described on the RDS website.

In any case, the claims of ADI do not stand up to scrutiny…

On 6 September 2007 the European Parliament adopted Written Declaration 0040/2007, now referred to as ‘WD40’, which called for the European Commission to use the revision of the Directive on animal research to ‘establish a timetable for replacing the use of all primates in scientific experiments with alternatives’.

However, written declarations are not part of the legislative process. They are simply an expression of opinion. Any MEP can put down a written declaration on any subject and then ask others to sign it. MEPs are usually willing to sign these declarations simply because they do not have any real effect. Many of the MEPs who signed this one had previously signed ones calling for more research in serious or debilitating diseases.

If over 50% of the MEPs sign a declaration it is ‘adopted’ – ie read into the minutes of the Parliament and a copy sent to the European Commission. Nothing else happens, although in this case we understand the Commission is likely make a statement in response.

MEPs dislike the idea that primates are used in experiments, because they do not understand why it is necessary and because they have been given a false impression by animal rights groups that it involves causing a lot of suffering to chimpanzees and other higher primates. The antivivisectionists even sent ‘gorillagrams’ to MEPs. Chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas have not been used in the UK for over 20 years and their use is now banned. We don’t have any figures, but we would be most surprised to find that gorillas had been used in any European country in recent years.

More effort is now being made by the scientific community to explain to MEPs the importance of animal research and the use of non-human primates. Earlier this week a group of scientific organisations held a briefing in the European Parliament with research experts to start this process.

The presentations at this event made a compelling case for such research. But perhaps the most enjoyable part of the briefing was to see the researcher for Caroline Lucas MEP, an ardent antivivisectionist and supporter of the written declaration, being put on the spot. She was asked about the sentence in the declaration that suggested monkeys destined for Europe are at risk of being used for ‘human consumption’. She had to admit that this was not true. Sometimes the facts matter.