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It all came out in the just-concluded trial of a Cambodian official: The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) discovered mountains of evidence that monkeys exported from Asia are being ripped from their forest homes and smugglers are delivering them throughout mainland Asia. Cambodia wasn’t the only country exporting monkeys who had been shoved into crates, labeled as captive-bred (i.e., laundered), and shipped across the ocean to be tormented in U.S. laboratories.
Although this individual was acquitted, FWS agents’ testimony left no reasonable doubt about these shady dealings. Forests in multiple Asian countries are being emptied of monkeys in order to feed the greedy animal experimentation industry. The five-year investigation that FWS conducted revealed illegal practices, including transporting monkeys across borders at night, swapping out identifying information, and falsifying paperwork. FWS showed that the illegal trade in black-market monkeys is a rampant, coordinated, and well-oiled machine of clandestine criminality cloaking itself in the abhorrent, but legal, trade in monkey misery.
The only sensible course of action is to ban the importation of all long-tailed macaques from Asia.
PETA strongly urges the FWS to take these three steps:
1. End all monkey imports from Asia immediately.
2. Speed up its investigation into U.S. companies that profit from illegally captured monkeys.
3. Indict the unnamed U.S. coconspirators in the just-concluded case.
Please help us by TAKING ACTION below to urge the FWS to move quickly to save these monkeys’ lives and help prevent their species’ extinction.
U.S. Players
Evidence presented in court showed that two U.S. importers—Worldwide Primates and Orient BioResource Center (now Inotiv)—signed off on paperwork for monkeys they knew were illegally abducted and sold as captive-bred. These are giant corporations that make millions of dollars by trafficking in sentient beings, and FWS showed that apparently, they sometimes do it illegally.
That’s why the FWS must speedily investigate U.S. companies that profit from black-market monkeys—including Charles River Laboratories, one of Worldwide Primates’ biggest customers.
Please urge the FWS to follow up its investigation with additional necessary actions to save monkeys from extinction by keeping them out of U.S. laboratories and in the forests where they belong.