“What I did not expect to see from farmed monkeys being bought and transported into the US, were monkeys who were coming in with things like Ebola like viruses, malaria, tuberculosis, simian retrovirus, herpes viruses, salmonella, Yersinia, Campylobacter, unnamed deadly diarrheal diseases. They were coming in with Tier 1 Select agents. I mean, we're talking pathogens so deadly that the government has identified them as potential bioterrorism threats.” – Lisa Jones-Engel
In 2022, 1000 long-tailed macaques were stolen from the wild in Cambodia. They were then illegally imported to Charles River Laboratories in Texas. Illegal because they were wild caught and not born in captivity, which is the law for importing primates into the US for research and experimentation, they are required to be captive bred.
These macaques are now caught in the middle of an ongoing federal investigation into primate importers. Charles River wants to send them back to Cambodia, which means that from there they’ll go to labs in other countries. PETA is fighting hard to get them sent to Born Free’s Primate Sanctuary in Texas.
One of the leaders in this battle is Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. A couple of weeks ago, Lisa came on the show for a live episode to talk about the fate of these monkeys and what could be the beginning of the end of importing primates for experimentation.
Because we did this interview as a webinar and Lisa was in a remote part of Alaska, the sound isn’t the best, but this is a super important episode.
Lisa spent many years working in biomedical laboratories with primates. She knows everything that goes on on the inside of these facilities and knows first-hand that no one in there is looking out for these animals.
In 2019, when she couldn't take it anymore, Lisa left the biomedical world and joined forces with PETA. She's PETA's Senior Science Advisor, and not only leading the fight to save these 1000 monkeys, but also to end all imports and then, to end the use of primates in animal research and experimentation period. I think that she can do it.
Links:
PETA Petition https://support.peta.org/page/50306/action/1?locale=en-US
PETA: https://headlines.peta.org/primatologist-perspective-monkey-experiments/
Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/31/primates-monkeys-scientific-experiments-peta-stop-testing