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Like you, PETA cheered for the 43 monkeys who fled their Alpha Genesis prison in South Carolina in November 2024. For a brief, extraordinary moment, they outsmarted their tormentors and tasted the freedom they had been denied.
But that moment has passed. All 43 monkeys have been recaptured, and what remains is the urgent need to change the cruel system that endangered them in the first place.
The monkeys came from Morgan Island, a colony that supplies the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) monkey pipeline. When NIH wants more monkeys to use in deadly experiments, they’re plucked from the island and shipped to Alpha Genesis, Inc.—an incompetent company with a long, disgraceful history of violating even minimal animal-welfare standards. It currently holds $19 million in NIH contracts.
In the past decade, the company has allowed 109 monkeys to escape in 12 separate incidents. Federal inspectors have repeatedly cited Alpha Genesis after employees killed monkeys through neglect: several froze to death after being left outside, one died of thirst when water was never turned back on, and an infant died after becoming entangled in gauze. Read more about the company’s long list of violations here.
Years of Abuse
In 2017, PETA filed a complaint prompting the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to take the rare step of fining the company for serious violations that caused severe injuries and the deaths of two monkeys. In December 2024, a whistleblower shared harrowing information and graphic photographs with PETA, shedding new light on the dismal conditions at Alpha Genesis. In July 2025, the USDA issued an official warning to Alpha Genesis after 22 endangered long-tailed macaques suffered agonizing, preventable deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning.
This facility does not deserve public money, yet NIH funds it through multimillion-dollar contracts.
What You Can Do
Alpha Genesis has repeatedly demonstrated that it cannot meet the most basic standards of care. NIH must cut its contracts with this company immediately.
Please urge NIH today to stop funneling public money into Alpha Genesis and end federal support for this cruelty and neglect.
After you take action, you’ll see an easy way to share this information. Please ask five friends or relatives to support this campaign!