For more than 18 months, the organization of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) carried out a survey on the conditions in which a group of owl monkeys or nocturnal monkeys live, used as experimental subjects for the Caucaseco Limited Scientific Research Center and the Primate Center Foundation (FUCEP), to develop a vaccine against malaria.
After talking to at least 11 workers from both companies they discovered that the monada (group of monkeys) lives on their es, in an improvised enclosure, made with rusty cages and a wire mesh, covered with plastic sheeting.
Primates would be fed with concentrate for dogs which is mixed with sugar water and its supposed caretakers would have no record of its current health, diet or age.
And, indeed, birth and necropsy certificates would not be available, so it is impossible to know how many monkeys died and from what, during the almost two decades that the investigation has been ongoing; which, by the way, received more than 17 million dollars of the US government and approx 22 billion pesos of the Colombian government.
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But, worst of all, the lab would have been functioning for the last 10 years without the necessary permissions to keep monkeys in captivity and experiment on them. Therefore, several specimens would have been abducted from their natural environment.
Peta first heard of a facility in rural Colombia where owl monkeys, some possibly abducted from forests in the northern part of the country, live in their own filth, in rusty cages in a makeshift enclosure with garden fences. and plastic sheeting”, indicates the investigation.
Information corroborated by a state agency that visited the laboratory facilities in November 2021 and found, among other things, that some primates had lost much of its furothers would have abnormal postures and many would also die without receiving veterinary treatment.
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Therefore, after repeated complaints, the Autonomous Regional Authority of Valle del Cauca (cvc extension) opened an investigation against the two possible main culprits: the Centro de Investigación Científica Caucaseco Limitada and the Fundación Centro de Primates (FUCEP).
Initiative supported by Ministry of ScienceTechnology and Innovation which, according to the portfolio manager, Arthur Moonis “conducting an investigation into internal information related to support for the supervision and monitoring of these projects.”
But that is not all. They also require the investigators in charge to pronounce on the findings of the case and to send the necessary supports so that, once all the information has been collected and consolidated, it can be brought before the competent authorities, and therefore the actions that may be required can be taken. . .
Because, according to PETA, “former employees paint a morbid picture of the monkeys’ condition, claiming, among other atrocities, that they are often exposed to the elements because the construction grid shifts in bad weather.”
Influencing their future, since, during the series of experiments to which they were exposed, they contracted malaria and paludism, becoming not only a danger to other monkeysyes, but also for humans.
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