Monkey Crash Memorial: Where Are the Danville 97?

For Immediate Release:
May 2, 2022

Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382

“Freightened to Death: Monkeys Belong in Nature, Not in Trucks,” declares a new sky-high message from PETA that just went up not far from where a truck carrying 100 monkeys bound for laboratory experiments crashed on January 21. Three of the monkeys escaped and were ordered shot on sight by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).The 97 remaining monkeys apparently received no evaluation or care while they were inside broken crates along the side of the highway in subfreezing temperatures. The fate of those monkeys is unknown.

The monkeys—who had just arrived in New York from Mauritius—had not been quarantined, potentially risking the spread of infection. Newly imported monkeys have brought Ebola-Reston, tuberculosis, and deadly diarrheal diseases with them, and workers have been exposed and infected. The CDC knows the risk that monkeys pose to humans. Following the accident, PETA obtained documents revealing that despite a federal law that requires all monkeys transported between laboratories and/or breeding facilities to be examined by a veterinarian within 10 days of shipment, at least 1,881 monkeys who were trucked to and from multiple states in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic had not been examined within the required time frame. Those findings prompted PETA to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, asking that it investigate lawbreaking primate facilities and suspend their licenses.

“There are federal laws designed to protect human health when animals are being trucked throughout the country. The primate biomedical industry can’t even abide by these most basic regulations, which are essential for the control, surveillance, and eradication of pathogens,” says PETA primate scientist Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “PETA urges everyone troubled by these monkeys’ fate to contact their members of Congress and ask them to support the bipartisan Research Modernization Deal, which emphasizes cutting-edge, human-relevant research methods.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.