Animal rights group wins court fight for UW monkey research records

University of Wisconsin-Madison documents about primate research are public records and should be turned over to Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

The decision by the District 4 court in Madison reversed a Dane County Circuit Court judge who had agreed with the UW-Madison that records were mere "notes ... prepared for the originator's personal use."

According to the decision, ALDF in 2013 requested records from the Animal Care and Use Committee regarding protocols it approved for research on primates involving maternal deprivation and social isolation. The committee is required by federal law to advise UW-Madison officials regarding animal use in research.

The committee provided some records but withheld others as not meeting the definition of public records. The ALDF sued, and the judge privately examined 10 of them, from a March 2014 committee meeting, and concluded they were notes.

ARCHIVE:Animal rights group sues for notes about UW monkey research

The appellate court agreed the disputed documents were notes. Eight of the 10 were handwritten during committee meetings, and two were typed but with handwritten notes on them. But the court disagreed that they were solely for the writer's personal use.

Citing a prior case, the court said that if notes are shared with others to communicate information, or are kept for the purpose of memorializing an agency's activity, they qualify as public records.

The court noted that while the author of some of the notes claimed they were solely to refresh her own memory of the committee's meeting, another member said she would get such notes from members for use in drafting the formal minutes. The same was true of the notes kept by the primary writer of the minutes, the court found.

The ALDF had protested that the planned research at UW-Madison would amount to "psychological trauma" for young monkeys. It says 20 newborn macaques would be placed in incubators with a stuffed-toy surrogate, then later paired with another unfamiliar young macaque. Researchers would study how well the young pair reared each other absent a mother. Ultimately, all 40 animals would be killed.

Researchers later decided to cancel the aspect of the study that involved taking newborn monkeys from their mothers, citing other research, not the complaints of animal rights activists.