Abstract
Macaque monkeys, especially Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata), have physiological functions close to humans and have been used as important laboratory animals in various fields of biomedical researches including physiology. The Japanese monkeys used in the laboratories have been supplied from the wild source, where monkeys were captured as agricultural pest or from small colonies of bred animals. Thus, no large scale breeding colony has been founded in Japan. However, strong criticism against use of wild animals for laboratory research were raised and Ministry of the Environment decided to restrict the use of captured monkeys for laboratory use. Further, now we need to enhance the quality of laboratory animals for future development of science. From these reasons, we decided to launch the project to establish breeding colonies of Japanese monkeys and applied the project to "National Bioresource Project". The application has been approved and started from the fiscal year 2002. However, when we started to collect founder monkeys for the colonies, the project faced strong protest from animal right groups. In this symposium, I present the current status of the project and discuss about how to solve such social issues and about public relations of animal experiments in general. [Jpn J Physiol 54 Suppl:S30 (2004)]
