Project R&R submitted ’07 testimony to the House and Senate Appropriations Committee, asking that no more federal dollars be appropriated to breeding of chimpanzees or any research that involves breeding of chimpanzees.

In addition to our financial argument, we have also noted in the testimony that the public has assumed a ‘hidden tax’, because there are chimpanzees that were federally owned or supported whose lifetime care now falls squarely on the shoulders of private sanctuaries and their caring public donors.

…the caring American public has been burdened with the ethical obligation of some estimated $1.29 billion dollars to care for chimpanzees from laboratories, without any further obligation for this care placed on the laboratories themselves and with none of these privately funded sanctuaries having, at this time, access to federal dollars for their chimpanzee care. Given the American public’s deep and growing concern over the use of chimpanzees in research, the NIH’s history of breeding has created a hidden, even if self-assumed, ‘tax’…

The testimony was signed by Project R&R President Theo Capaldo, EdD, and co-chair Gloria Grow, and other Project R&R advisors.

The submission details other relevant issues, including “surplus” and over-breeding, limitations and dangers of using chimpanzees to study human health and disease as well as quality of care, or lack thereof, for chimpanzees in labs.

Click here to read the testimony.