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Update: October 15, 2021
The vice president of a Texas-based monkey importer and laboratory supplier has been sentenced to three years of probation with a three-month home confinement order and fined $5,000 for lying to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service special agents.
Gary Tucker of Orient BioResource Center had pleaded guilty to the charge earlier this year after his company—part of the sordid business of international trafficking of monkeys who are doomed for use in U.S. laboratories—became the subject of a criminal investigation.
PETA has documented the misery of monkeys stuffed into small wooden boxes, stacked inside the cargo holds of planes, and shipped around the world in fear, sometimes dying on the way. (See details and video footage below.)
These animals can harbor deadly pathogens that kill humans—an experimenter in China recently died after being infected with the Monkey B virus—and the horrors that these primates face as experimental subjects should be (and one day will be) illegal. It’s time to shut down the trade in monkeys and modernize research. Please help by taking action below.
Originally published on August 6, 2019:
A group that supports virtually all experiments on animals, no matter how cruel or wasteful, is trying to persuade the government that it has the authority to force four private airlines to transport monkeys from other countries to the U.S. for use in laboratories. British Airways, China Southern Airlines, Qatar Airways, and United Airlines made the compassionate business choice years ago to stop transporting monkeys for this purpose. But experimenters are apparently so bloodthirsty for animals to imprison, harm, and kill that they have filed a formal complaint with the Department of Transportation to try to compel these private airlines to do the bidding of a small group of people who make their living by subjecting monkeys to isolation, invasive surgeries, drug addiction, food deprivation, and death.
Please take action right now to tell the Department of Transportation that you stand by these airlines—which aren't government entities—and their right to make their own business decisions.
Every major commercial airline in the world except one, Air France, refuses to transport primates destined for experimentation—for the safety of their staff members, their passengers, and the monkeys.
PETA investigations have shown what happens to monkeys in U.S. laboratories:
Primate laboratories in the U.S. have a dismal history of abuse. Many of them are now or were recently under federal investigation for violations of animal protection laws. PETA eyewitness investigations into Primate Products, Inc., Covance, the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC), the University of Utah, and others have shown what life is like for these sensitive, intelligent animals in facilities that rake in hundreds of millions of tax dollars to experiment on them.
Federal records show that monkeys in laboratories have died by strangulation in their cages, when gauze was left in their bodies after surgery, when they were left in cages put through high-temperature cage washers with scalding-hot water, when they escaped and no one noticed, and in other ways.
Then there is the fact that experiments on animals don't work and are often just plain stupid—like the experiments at the ONPRC in which baby monkeys were frightened with Mr. Potato Head toys. Those cost taxpayers $750,000.
Please take action by sending U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg a polite letter saying that you oppose this cruel initiative and that airlines must not be forced to transport monkeys to laboratories but rather should be able to set their own policies.
Putting the subject line and letter into your own words will help draw attention to your e-mail.