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Shamrock Farm


Shamrock Farm was Britain's only non-human primate importation and quarantine centre, located in Small Dole, near Brighton in West Sussex. The centre, owned by Bausch and Lomb, and run by Charles River Laboratories, Inc. for Shamrock (GB) Ltd, closed in 2000 after a 15-month protest by British animal rights activists, who campaigned under the name "Save the Shamrock Monkeys."

The company was set up in 1954, trading in wild-caught primates until 1993 and captive-bred ones thereafter. The animals were held in windowless cabins in the company's 40,000 sq ft (3,700 m2) facility, surrounded by 16 ft-high fences, razor wire, and cameras. A touch-sensitive wire ran along the base of the perimeter, with CCTV cameras zooming in on any spot that was touched.

Primates captured from the wild, or purchased from breeding facilities, were held there for two months for tests, until they were ready to be sold to animal-testing laboratories across Europe. It was Europe's largest supplier of primates to laboratories, and held up to 350 monkeys at a time, processing 2,500 a year on average, and selling them for around £1,600 each. The company bought and sold baboons, macaques, grivet, patas, and squirrel monkeys; almost all of the 2,467 macaques used in British laboratories in 1998 came through Shamrock. Its customers included Huntingdon Life Sciences, SmithKline Beecham, GlaxoWellcome, the Porton Down military science park, and the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London, Glasgow, and Manchester, according to Animal Aid.


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