Exposed: How Monkeys Are Neglected and Terrorised at Notorious US Primate Dealer
PETA US’ latest eyewitness investigation shows how monkeys destined for experiments are systemically mistreated by workers at Primate Products, Inc (PPI), in Florida.
PPI warehouses and sells monkeys to the vivisection industry, where they will face terrifying and painful experiments in laboratories before eventually being killed. The dealer has been awarded federal contracts worth more than $13 million and sends monkeys to the National Institutes of Health, the US Army and many of America’s most prestigious universities.
As you can see in the shocking video footage, PPI workers chased after and grabbed terrified monkeys by their sensitive tails. They aggressively swung nets at them, yanked them off the fences that they desperately clung to and even hurled them into nets. Veterinary experts have weighed in on the footage, concluding that such treatment would “cause the animals severe behavioral stress, anxiety, and fear”.
Some monkeys with painful injuries, including exposed bones, were left to suffer for days. One monkey was denied adequate veterinary care for an exposed vertebra in her tail for at least seven days. Other monkeys who were clearly underweight and severely ill were left to die alone in their cages.
Lay workers crudely pulled sedated monkeys’ teeth out. As one monkey opened his mouth and grabbed at the unsanitised table that he had been put on, a veterinarian cut part of his tail off. Experts concurred that the monkey had not been given adequate anaesthetics and felt the painful cuts and that doing this was also “extremely psychologically stressful” for other monkeys who were watching from nearby.
Being locked in barren metal cages and denied everything that’s natural and important to them also took a great psychological toll on the animals. Some monkeys who were kept in solitary confinement and denied the companionship of other monkeys, which is crucial to their mental and physical health, were seen rocking back and forth and pacing in circles – well-known stereotypic types of behaviour.
In 2014 alone, PPI imported 1,000 monkeys from Asia and Africa – 63 per cent of whom were wild-caught. Once at PPI, workers took blood and spinal fluid from sedated monkeys – and then euthanised some of them and withdrew fluid from their eyes – to sell to laboratories. Those who survive PPI will eventually be trucked to government facilities, for-hire testing laboratories and universities.
This investigation is the latest indictment of an industry that mistreats animals at every stage – including the squalid factory farms where monkeys are often bred, the harrowing journey to the West in the cargo holds of planes and the cold laboratory cages where they’re subjected to horrifying procedures before being discarded like rubbish when they are no longer considered useful.
While PETA US is campaigning for disgraceful PPI to be shut down, here in the UK, you can help by joining our campaign against one company which is helping to make this type of abuse possible – Air France, the last major airline that still ships monkeys for experiments.
