Spain is the main EU entry point for the test monkeys. This investigation traces the supply chain from the breeding facilities of the Indian Ocean island to the testing and warehousing sites that hold thousands of the endangered animals on European soil. The reporting exposes the corporate structures behind the trade, the transport routes that move the animals into the EU, and the gap between how the industry justifies itself and what the reporting on the ground reveals.
The reporting centres on Charles River Laboratories, a US biomedical corporation, and on Bioculture, the Mauritius’s largest breeder of long-tailed macaques. The investigation lays bare the economics of the trade: trappers are paid up to €180 per wild-caught animal, while a single macaque now sells to a laboratory for as much as €45,000. And the investigation exposes a truth the industry prefers you not to know: long-tailed macaques, an endangered species, aren’t even required for testing.
Photo by Nathalie Bertrams, Long-tailed macaques from Mauritius in Europe’s largest monkey farm Camarney, Tarragona, Spain
