关键词: 非灵长类, 动物福利

Abstract: While comparing non human primates with human beings, it is not hard to conclude certain similarities between these two based on aspects such as morphological anatomy, biochemistry functioning and so on. As a result, non human primates often play an important role in life scientific researches. These primates are always used as “Stand Ins" for human beings. In the processes of toxicological testing of new drugs, some drugs, especially drugs of genic projects or biological medicines are requiring uses of primates as part of the new drug testing. Therefore, the morality and ethics of using non human primates have to be emphasised by people. After all, this is one of the issues that concerns with the expectations of meeting the international scientific research standards by our national laboratory animal sciences. In fact, the moral and ethical problems of non human primates experiments is related to the matters of animal welfares. What is so called “Animal Welfare"? One Taiwanese researcher Xia Liang Zhou (1990) has concluded the application of animal welfare as such: “To treat the alive animals better, and to reduce their pain of dies." Actually, this has summarised the animal welfares throughout the life of an animal. At the current stage, the principals of the Law of International Animal Welfare lay emphasis on ensuring 5 basic freedoms of animals, which include:1. Freedom of NOT suffering hunger and thirst;2. Freedom of having comfortable lives;3. Freedom of NOT suffering hurts, pains and diseases;4. Freedom of NOT being scared;5. Freedom of expressing its nature. The International Fund For Animal Welfare (IFAW) is the largest animal welfare organisation around the globe. There is an operational branch of this organisation in Beijing, China. This organisation aims to stand for the animals' rights to life, to promote the wild animal protections, and to support the practices of 3R (i.e. Replacement, Reduction and Refinement) of animal experiments by scientific researchers. These are all correct opinions and steps; especially researchers of the non human primate experiments should treat the animals better and improve the qualities of scientific researches. How to treat the animals better in the processes of non human primate experiments? According to our experiences and practices, it should mainly include the following aspects:1. To provide comfortable living environments for the animals. One should also try to meet and fulfil the natural environment, even temperatures and moisture levels, required by the animals. Certain degree of activity spaces should be available. The sizes of feeding cages are required to meet the standards. In particular, cages cannot be undersized, which might bring stresses to the animals. 2. To provide feeds with enough nutrition, as well as clean drinkable water. One should pay special attentions to the feeding of animals during the experiment processes.3. While catching and securing primates, one should handle the animals gently and carefully without hurting the animals. Ataractics and/or narcotics could be applied accordingly, in order to reduce the pain of animals for the durations of the operations.4. After the experiments of non human primates, unless pathological anatomies are essential to obtain necessary data, one should try to reduce the quantity of animal killing. Using isolated natural islands to set the tested animals free would be a preferable way. If killing of animals is unavoidable, euthanasia is more desirable to reduce the pain of dying.5. To set up “Animal Tomb" to mourn for the contributions and sacrifices of laboratory animals for the improvements of science.

Key words: Non human primates, Animal welfares