Oregon State Legislators: Meet These Terms or Shutter OHSU Primate Center

Update (June 30, 2025): In a significant and historic leap of progress, the Oregon Legislature passed a measure requiring the Oregon National Primate Research Center provide a detailed plan to close its facility by 2026 if:

• it receives or uses any state money, or
• if the National Institutes of Health slashes its funding by 25 percent of 2024 levels.

This is the first time lawmakers have attached conditions about the primate center to the state’s budget, and shows the legislators’ lack of support for the violation-plagued laboratory.

The move follows unrelenting pressure from PETA and our supporters in Oregon who contacted their representatives about closing the center. Dozens spoke against the facility at a recent legislative hearing, and many others have expressed support for closing Oregon Health & Science University’s primate center.

While a plan to close the facility is a great first step, it is not the same as closing it. Please continue to pressure state lawmakers to shut down this monkey prison. It is within reach!

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OHSU has a long history of failing to abide by state and federal animal welfare laws at its primate center, which imprisons more than 5,000 monkeys. Public records have documented workers drinking alcohol on the job, as well as a long history of careless handling and inadequate veterinary care. Officials even requested special exemptions for sanitizing monkeys’ cages only half as often as required in 2022 and 2023, because the facility was so short-staffed.

In 2023, an infant monkey was crushed to death by a heavy steel guillotine-style door in front of her frantic mother. The school also illegally surveilled PETA and violated open-records laws by refusing to release video of macaques used in some of its cruel experiments, a circuit court ruled.

Experimenting on monkeys may have sounded like a good idea in 1960, when the facility was opened, but it has failed to produce treatments and cures for humans and the miserable lives and deaths of the primates can never be excused. Harvard recognized this a decade ago and closed its national primate research center.

A majority of Oregonians want the primate center closed, as does Governor Tina Kotek, and a majority of all Americans oppose the use of animals for experimentation altogether.

What You Can Do

We owe Oregon legislators our gratitude, and now we must urge them to work to close the primate center. PETA urges every Oregonian to please TAKE ACTION today.

After you take action, you’ll see an easy way to share this information. Please ask five friends or relatives to support this campaign!

Take Action Now!

This action is limited to residents of Oregon.

Fields with an asterisk(*) are required. 

Why are title options limited? Legislators require that the title field be filled in to contact them, and some officials offer only limited options. We will add more options as Congress makes them available.