The United States could lose its edge in developing treatments for illnesses ranging from Aids and the Ebola virus to malaria and Parkinson's disease, due to the latest products hit by the US-China trade war: monkeys.
The Trump administration is set to add a 10% tariff on September 1 on more than $100 billion of Chinese imports. One item is of particular concern to researchers: live primates " 80% of the monkeys imported by America's research laboratories are bred in China.
The new duty could force researchers, who are already facing difficulty in procuring live animals from abroad for testing, to reconsider their US operations, said Matthew R. Bailey, executive director of the National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR,) a trade group.
"The increased tariffs will firstly cause a reduction in the number and scope of vitally important US-based research and development projects; and secondly trigger a migration of US R&D to China," Bailey said in a June 17 letter to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in opposition of the tariffs.
US President Donald Trump is using import tariffs on Chinese products as a blunt instrument to force Beijing to change what he called unfair trade practices.
Primates imported from China are used for a variety of testing, including behavioral research, treatments for infectious diseases, neuroscience and regenerative medicine, ageing and neuroscience research.
There may be no real alternative to China for American universities, research foundations and pharmaceutical companies, experts said.
China has been the biggest offshore breeder of live primates to the US for more than a decade and last year exported more than double the shipments of the next three biggest supplies " Cambodia, Mauritius and Vietnam " combined, according to the US International Trade Commission.
The percentage of available primates that meet research specifications from alternative countries of origin "is far too low to meet US demand," Bailey said.
When the National Institutes of Health said it would no longer support research on chimpanzees in the US four years ago, a number of studies that required chimpanzees moved to China, the NABR said.
The European Union banned research on great apes, including chimpanzees, in 2010, except in limited circumstances. Research is still allowed on other non-human primates, involving about 10,000 a year, according to the European Commission.
US researchers are also running into increasing difficulty in acquiring macaques and other primates from abroad, due to the opposition from animal rights groups.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the advocacy group for animal rights, would like to see the import of monkeys banned completely " or tariffed at an even higher rate.
"If the proposed 10% tariff is implemented, we hope that this will slow down the imports of monkeys, stemming demand for the beleaguered animals and slowing down breeding in China's farms," said Alka Chandra, PETA vice-president for laboratory investigations cases.
"This would bode well not only for the monkeys, but also for science and for human patients."
Under pressure from animal activists, most major air carriers have stopped transporting animals for research and China's own demands for research animals have increased.
PETA successfully lobbied British Airways, China Southern Airlines and United Airlines, to stop transporting non-human primates on commercial flights in recent years.
Last year, the NABR filed a complaint with the US Department of Transportation, seeking to force airlines to carry the animals. Dozens of universities, research organisations, private foundations and pharmaceuticals have filed letters of support.
Airlines have argued that they "acted reasonably" in implementing the bans, saying that airlines transporting research animals have faced protests and other actions that have caused service disruptions.
The ban has forced commercial suppliers of primates to use charter flights to import the animals to the US, but those flights also are harder to come by, according to a report by the National Institutes of Health.
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