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Shamrock Farm was Britain's only primate importation and quarantine centre, located in Small Dole, West Sussex. 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 and vivisection laboratories across Europe. It was Europe's largest supplier of primates for vivisection, and held up to 350 monkeys at a time, processing around 2,500 a year, and selling them for around £1,600 each. Almost all of the 2,467 macaques used in British laboratories in 1998 came through Shamrock. [1]

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." [2]

The facility was set up in 1954, and traded largely in baboons, macaques, grivet, patas and squirrel monkeys, which were caught in the wild and taken back to Britain, where they were held in metal cages for two months, largely in isolation from one another depending on the customers' requirements, while they underwent x-rays and tests to determine whether they were suffering from illnesses that might affect subsequent test results, or which might spread to other monkeys.

An undercover investigation by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) in 1992 found high mortality rates among the monkeys from enteritis and pneumonia, while other monkeys were killed because of deformities or being underweight. The primates were denied socialization or any form of stimulation or environmental enrichment, and engaged in stereotypical behaviors such as continuous rocking, twisting, self-mutilation, and wailing. BUAV also witnessed rough handling by staff, who were alleged to have been inadequately trained. [3]

Following the BUAV investigation, the company announced in 1993 that it would stop buying wild primates. It started trading instead in primates from breeding centres in China, Mauritius, and the Philippines, although no laws exist in these countries to prevent stocks of primates being brought in from the wild.

According to the British organization Animal Aid, Shamrock's customers included Huntingdon Life Sciences, SmithKline Beecham, Glaxo, Inveresk Research, Porton Down, the British defence research establishment, the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of London, University of Glasgow, and University of Manchester.

• "Good riddance to Shamrock Farm", Animal Aid, June 2000
• Interview with "Save the Shamrock Monkeys" campaign, Arkangel magazine, 2000
• "Save the Shamrock Monkeys" website
• "Shamrock", British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection

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