State government criticised for ruling against monkey experiment

European Animal Research Association claims Bremen government’s decision “appears to be dogmatically driven”

The European Animal Research Association has criticised a decision by the German state of Bremen to prevent a neuroscience research project from using monkeys.

Bremen’s government issued the ban on the grounds that the proposed research did not have a clear enough application to rationalise the suffering that the animals would face. “Even in the context of basic research, it must be required that, in order to justify an animal experiment, it is likely that the expected knowledge gain will have a clinical application benefit in the near future,” the state government ruled.