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As an international regulator dawdles, monkeys die.
PETA has learned that the cruel trade in laboratory-bound monkeys will continue, at least for now, because the U.S. government convinced an international regulatory body to delay a recommendation to suspend the trade of long-tailed macaques from Cambodia.
The disappointing decision of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Standing Committee punted its own Secretariat’s recommendation to suspend trade from Cambodia, a country known for passing off monkeys abducted from forests as “captive-bred.”
PETA provided data analysis to CITES that, in part, influenced the Secretariat's recommendation to suspend the trade in long-tailed macaques from Cambodia. And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service supplied CITES with a mountain of evidence documenting that Cambodia was caught red-handed falsifying export paperwork and laundering tens of thousands of wild-caught monkeys into the laboratory supply chain. There is no proof that anything has changed.
There is no way to determine that monkeys imported from Cambodia were not illegally ripped away from their families in their forest homes. Contrary to cryptic claims from monkey importers, no genetic test exists to prove that monkeys were not poached.
Despite this, CITES chose to safeguard the profits of corporations like Charles River Laboratories rather than the animals it’s supposed to protect. This move could set the stage for the U.S. government to again allow the import of these endangered monkeys from Cambodia. That means more monkeys ripped from forests and sold into experimentation just so companies like Charles River can get richer.
We can’t let that happen.
What You Can Do
Please TAKE ACTION below and urge the Department of the Interior, which oversees the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to continue banning the import of endangered monkeys from Cambodia.
After you take action, you’ll see an easy way to share this information. Please ask five friends or relatives to support this campaign!