"A matter of morality"  The British government has announced "a ban on the use of Great Apes". The announcement was part of the Home Secretary's response to an interim report from the government's Animal Procedures Committee, which is reviewing the operation of the law regulating animal experiments. The ban is now government policy, although no legislation is planned.  "Great Apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, pygmy gorillas [sic - they mean pygmy chimpanzees], and orang-utans) have never been used under the 1986 Act as laboratory animals. But this has not previously been banned. The Government will not allow their use in future.

© People Against Chimpanzee Experiments (PACE) 1997

Lord Williams of Mostyn announced a range of proposals, including: "A ban on the use of Great Apes (chimpanzees, pygmy chimpanzees [bonobos], gorillas and orang-utans) - Great Apes have never been used under the current legislation and the Government will not allow their use in scientific procedures."

Lord Williams added: "Although these proposed bans cannot be statutory under current legislation, I do not foresee any circumstances in which the Home Office would issue licences in such cases."

This historic move indicates the success of the Great Ape Project in persuading the British public and its political leaders of the key idea that it is fundamentally wrong to treat great apes as laboratory tools.

GAP has made the case for special rights and protections for great apes. This idea has had a lot of publicity in Britain since the release of the book The Great Ape Project in 1993. And GAP's cause has attracted attention internationally. A Private Member's bill inspired by GAP-UK was presented by Member of Parliament Tony Banks in February 1997. This sought to ban invasive experiments on nonhuman great apes as unethical. It was blocked by a single, formal objection, despite the support of several prominent MPs.

Of course, GAP's efforts rely on thirty years of scientific and campaigning work by people such as Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Birute Galdikas, and the organisations that they established. And several organisations in the UK have campaigned against experiments on chimpanzees.

The ban marks an important change in the status of nonhuman great apes in the UK. Purely ethical reasons are being used to decide that they should not be subjected to invasive experiments. The focus is on the complex mental, emotional and social lives of our fellow great apes, rather than on their supposed utility value. Invasive experiments are not being banned because they have no scientific value for humans, but because, as GAP has repeatedly pointed out, they are an injustice towards our great-ape peers. This is the first time that any government has made such a statement.

This may seem a small step, given that no apes have been used in experiments in the UK for a decade, but it is a giant stride for our great ape kin. It recognises, for the first time, that their nature and capacities mean we are not entitled to treat them as property. If this view spreads to the rest of Europe, and ultimately worldwide, GAP will be much closer to achieving its aim of including all the great apes, human and nonhuman, in the community of equals...