Monkeys From Primate Products Suffering in Laboratories

PETA’s eyewitness investigation into Primate Products, Inc. (PPI), a notorious Hendry County, Florida, monkey dealer, revealed abuse and systemic neglect of monkeys. And life for these animals didn’t get any better once PPI sold them.

Here are just a few of the places to which PETA traced monkeys from PPI:

• In an experiment at a U.S. Army laboratory in Maryland, 30 monkeys purchased from PPI were isolated by themselves in sterile, stainless-steel cages and infected with the Ebola-like Marburg virus. In humans and monkeys, this virus can cause a severe fever, rash, diarrhea, and deadly hemorrhages. Like at PPI, in this experiment several of the monkeys died in their cages. Experimenters noted that some of them suffered from organ failure, developed a fever and a rash, and were hunched over and unresponsive before dying.
• At the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, 48 monkeys purchased from PPI were used in a crude radiation experiment. They were locked up by themselves, injected in their backs with an experimental compound—which caused some monkeys to develop abscesses—and restrained inside a Plexiglas chamber, where they were exposed to various levels of radiation. Radiation exposure in monkeys can cause loss of appetite, weight loss, anemia, organ failure, and death. Fourteen monkeys were killed after developing some or all of these symptoms.
• At a laboratory in California, monkeys from PPI were turned into alcoholics to study the effect that drinking had on their ability to perform different tasks. In some of the experiments, monkeys were given alcohol five days a week for 10 months, causing some lasting cognitive damage.

For many of these monkeys, the laboratory was the last stop on a long, sad journey. PETA’s investigation of PPI revealed that workers crudely yanked monkeys’ teeth out, that monkeys with painful injuries—including exposed bones—were left to suffer for days, and that chronically ill monkeys died in their cages.

The monkeys who survive these hellish conditions are used for breeding, mined for products like bone marrow and blood plasma, or sold to laboratories across the country to be tormented in cruel experiments, despite the availability of superior—and human-relevant—non-animal research methods.

Following PETA’s investigation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited PPI for 25 violations of the Animal Welfare Act, and the dealer remains under investigation.

Monkeys bought and sold by PPI suffer and die in its Hendry County facility and in laboratories across the country. Ask Hendry County officials to help protect monkeys from cruelty by shutting down PPI.