Charles River Scraps Plans for Massive Monkey Prison in Texas After PETA Campaign

For Immediate Release:
September 11, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Brazoria County, Texas

Victory! An 11-month campaign by PETA and local residents has forced monkey importer Charles River Laboratories to scrap plans to build the largest monkey-holding facility in the Western hemisphere on ecologically sensitive land in Texas.

Charles River, the largest importer of monkeys used in laboratory experiments, sought to build a facility capable of housing 43,000 primates, but the company is now selling all 539 acres of Columbia Bottomlands it planned to construct it on, according to an article in The Facts.

Credit: PETA

PETA first notified Brazoria County commissioners that Charles River had purchased the land—under a different company name and without disclosing the plans publicly—in October 2023. Since then, PETA has spoken at Board of Commissioners meetings, mailed letters exposing the plan to 4,000 area residents, run public service announcements online and on billboards, rallied tens of thousands of people to sign a petition opposing the planned facility, submitted a proposal asking Charles River shareholders to abandon the plan, and more.

“Thanks to the kind residents of Brazoria County, Charles River won’t risk environmental damage or the public’s health by imprisoning 43,000 traumatized monkeys in southeast Texas,” says PETA primate scientist Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “PETA is proud to have helped protect the community and calls on Charles River to switch to animal-free research methods and keep monkey prisons out of its plans.”

The proposed facility would have produced an estimated 100,000 gallons of liquid waste every day, posing a major risk of environmental damage to the federally protected San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge and the San Bernard River that border the property. It also could have contaminated the environment with monkeys’ saliva, blood, and other bodily fluids. Monkeys used in the experimentation industry are known to carry and transmit herpes B virus, tuberculosis, Ebola-like viruses, simian hemorrhagic fever virus, shigellosis, salmonellosis, Campylobacter, malaria, dengue, and other pathogens and diseases. In addition, monkeys have escaped from other primate laboratories in Texas.

The is the second planned monkey warehouse that PETA, working with local residents, has halted in the past two years. In February 2023, Chinese company JOINN abandoned its plans for a monkey facility in Levy County, Florida. PETA’s work to halt a similar facility planned on ecologically vulnerable land in Bainbridge County, Georgia, continues.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

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