Virginia Senate passes bill requiring animal testing facilities to send unneeded primates to sanctuaries
RICHMOND, Va. (CN) —The Virginia Senate unanimously passed a bill Tuesday to put primates in sanctuaries after their time in laboratories.
Republican Senator William Stanley, with help from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, introduced the first-of-its-kind bill requiring publicly funded animal testing facilities to offer primates they no longer need to accredited sanctuaries.
“We are only a couple chromosomes away from being them,” Stanley said on the Senate floor. “We should give them the humane treatment they deserve especially when they are doing something such a service for us in the advancement of medical science.”
Eastern Virginia Medical School, now part of the Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University, is the only public school in Virginia still using primates, including olive baboons, long-tailed macaques and rhesus macaques. Last June, Stanley and two Democratic legislators expressed concern about the school’s repeated federal animal welfare violations.
https://courthousenews.com/virginia-senate-passes-bill-requiring-animal-testing-facilities-to-send-unneeded-primates-to-sanctuaries/