For Speedy Launch:
November 28, 2023

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Brazoria County, Texas – PETA and native residents scored a victory right this moment in opposition to the monkey-importation business when Brazoria County commissioners voted to help a decision recommending that state and federal authorities not problem permits to construct a proposed concrete monkey facility on environmentally delicate land. The vote was unanimous and follows a full-court press from PETA and residents who reside within the space.

“PETA applauds Brazoria County officers for taking step one to dam this moral, public well being, and ecological catastrophe,” says PETA primate scientist Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “Federal officers, together with these from the state of Texas, ought to observe their lead and cease this tragedy from  unfolding.” Previously few days, PETA despatched 4,000 letters to county residents alerting them to the hazards of the huge monkey-importation and breeding warehouse that Charles River Laboratories, underneath the included title Kandurt LLC, proposes to construct on greater than 500 acres of ecologically delicate land with old-growth forest. The property focused for the ability borders land owned and guarded by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, The Nature Conservancy, and the San Bernard Nationwide Wildlife Refuge.

The positioning of the proposed monkey facility on environmentally delicate land. Credit score: PETA

A number of native residents spoke in opposition to the ability on the assembly right this moment, together with a veterinarian, a drainage district director, a wildlife rehabber, administrators of conservation organizations, and a spokesperson for town of Sweeny. Jones-Engel additionally spoke on the commissioners’ November 14 assembly in regards to the risks that the ability might pose to each people and different animals within the space. The proposed facility would generate mountains of organic waste and introduce monkeys’ saliva, blood, and different bodily fluids into the setting, and animals imported into the U.S. by Charles River have carried lethal illnesses that may unfold to people and different animals. Monkeys concerned within the wildlife commerce for experimentation are identified to hold and transmit a slew of nasty pathogens and illnesses, together with herpes B virus, tuberculosis, Ebola-like viruses, simian hemorrhagic fever virus, shigellosis, salmonellosis, Campylobacter, malaria, and dengue. There’s additionally concern that monkeys might escape, which has occurred at different primate laboratories in Texas.

Charles River is already a high importer of monkeys into the U.S. and experiments on extra of them than some other firm—together with 16,000 monkeys in 2022 alone. Charles River is at present underneath federal investigation over the alleged unlawful smuggling of long-tailed macaques, an endangered species, from Asia to promote to U.S. laboratories.

PETA—whose motto reads, partially, that “animals should not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For extra info on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please go to PETA.org, take heed to The PETA Podcast, or observe the group on X (previously Twitter), Fb, or Instagram.