Perspectives: Call due 26 Feb 2016 for Submissions to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Prohibition of Live Imports of Primates for Research)

We need monkeys for life saving research to be done.
The Australian capacity to undertake this research is
under threat from a proposed legislative amendment.
Today is the last day you can put in a submission.

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Now is the time as researchers who use animals in research to make a statement about the significance of animals in research. Animal rights groups generously fill with misinformation the vacuum provided by the normally reticent research community, and are doing their best with Parliamentarians.  They've successfully influenced Senator Rhiannon to make a proposal to prohibit importing non human primates for research. If this amendment is passed, it will mean the inbreeding of Australia's existing research colonies of primates, and ultimately render them useless. It also means that the animal rights groups will use this success for them to lobby more and harder for further erosion of Australia's capacity to conduct medical research using animals.

There is a call for submissions to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Prohibition of Live Imports of Primates for Research). A senate committee will meet on 1 March to go through the submissions, so today (26 Feb) is the last day you can put your submission in.

See

• Outline of the proposed amendment and all the necessary links to further information, the current submissions and how to make your submission. (Ignore the 18 Jan due date there): www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/EPBC_Live_Primates_Bill
• A/Prof James Bourne's 5 Feb video presentation to the Senate committee 
• An excellent University of Edinburgh web page, "Animal Research" for proactive education of the community about their use of animals in research. They are on the front foot!
• 16 Feb 2016 AusSMC Briefing: Do we need to use animals in research? Speakers: Doug Hilton, James Bourne, Malcolm France. Link

Perspective: Animal research in the Senate spotlight

Associate Professor James Bourne is a Monash researcher working with non human primates. He made an excellent presentation defending the use of NHPs to the recent Senate committee hearing on a proposed amendment by Senator Rhiannon, to ban the import of NHPs for medical research. This has profound implications for NHP research, and more generally, for all animal researchers to be upfront and informative to the tax paying public about the animal based work and its necessity for understanding how our bodies do and don't work.

See the submissions page for details of the issue and no.12 submission for James Bourne's written submission to the committee. You can follow James Bourne on Twitter at https://twitter.com/neurdboy.