The Independent’s Green Goddess columnist Julia Stevenson’s green hue seems to be that of naivete and gullibility. Her latest column says ‘We don’t need to capture wild primates and destroy them in labs’. She’s right: we don’t need to and we don’t do it, because almost without exception primates are bred especially for research. And someone should tell Julia and her antivivisection spinmeisters that apes haven’t been used in the UK research for well over 20 years, or in any EU country since 2000.

That’s not all. Inspired by groups like Animal Defenders International (this is what the National Anti Vivisection Society prefers to call itself, unsurprisingly), she took part in a monkey-in-cage photocall last week. Apparently there were 20 photographers there. Strange we haven’t seen the pictures yet. Maybe they were all undercover police.

Singer Maria Daines was also there, whose dreadful dirge ‘Monkey in a Cage’ (earnest, but naff, lyrics here) is apparently topping indie and rock charts. I don’t follow the charts, but everyone tells me it’s nowhere near the top 20, let alone number one.

Julia is woefully out-of-date on the progress of the antivivisectionists’ Written Declaration in the European Parliament on primate research. She thinks it still has to get 100 more signatures ‘for a ban on primate testing’. Wrong on both counts. It has already received the requisite number of signatures (on the day before Julia’s piece was published) to move to the next stage, which I think means:

• EU President notifies EU Parliament which publishes declaration and names of signatories in the minutes of the relevant sitting. This ‘closes’ the procedure.
• Declaration is forwarded to institutions named together with names of the signatories.
• The EU Commission will probably provide a written answer to the declaration.

This hardly warrants the jubilation in the ADI camp and it certainly falls far short of ‘the end of primate research in Europe’. Jan Creamer, ADI chief executive, trumpeted:

‘This is history in the making and will end the suffering of some 10,000 primates a year in European labs and the adoption of more reliable modern alternatives.’

There is a deadly serious point here. Ending primate research would hamper research into HIV/AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, and malaria – to name but three serious medical problems in which primate studies are indispensible. While we would all wish to see non-animal alternatives ‘adopted’, it’s simply not possible until we have the alternatives, which is a long way off.

So it’s just as well that a Europe-wide ban cannot happen simply on the say so of naïve MEPs swayed by antivivisection songs and stunts.