Congress Considering Protections for Chimpanzees

The Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act just took a significant step forward. This summer, the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill, supporting its passage out of committee to a full Senate vote.

The legislation, which now has the bipartisan support of more than 180 members of Congress, would end invasive, harmful, and ineffective experiments on chimpanzees, permanently end breeding of chimpanzees for invasive experiments, and release federally owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries.

It would help Torian, Tiffany, and 13 other chimpanzees who endured years of experiments at Bioqual Inc. in Maryland and will now be sent to New Iberia Research Center, a notorious laboratory in Louisiana.

Earlier this year, PCRM filed a Petition for Enforcement Action against Bioqual with the federal government for unlawfully placing chimpanzees in solitary confinement and using them in unnecessary experiments.

Ending chimpanzee experiments will save a quarter of a billion taxpayer dollars over the next decade. The United States is the last country in the world that permits large-scale confinement of chimpanzees in laboratories and their use in invasive research.