Last year I had a chance to visit the Fauna Foundation, a sanctuary in Montreal for chimpanzees “retired” from research laboratories and entertainment.  The Fauna Foundation received a lot of press after writer Andrew Westoll wrote The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, which is an account of his time as a volunteer at the sanctuary (I recommend reading it!).  This sanctuary serves an important function because they offer peace and relative freedom to chimpanzees that have only known a caged existence as test subjects in biomedical facilities.  As an outspoken critic of this research, I am enormously grateful for these sanctuaries.  In biomedical facilities, chimpanzees often live in unsanitary conditions without areas for foraging or an ability to interact with other members of their own species.  Many chimpanzees that are eventually transferred to sanctuaries suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

That is why I was very happy to…