Feds Send 1,000 Endangered Monkeys to Cruel Charles River Laboratories
Update (August 06, 2025): In a stunning act of capitulation, U.S. federal agencies have handed Charles River Laboratories exactly what it wanted: permission to keep and experiment on more than 1,000 endangered monkeys—animals who were almost certainly trafficked from the wild.
Authorities also closed their investigation into the company’s monkey trafficking pipeline from Cambodia. The monkeys were previously seized as part of an investigation by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Department of Justice, and the Homeland Security, which found the animals were torn from their forest homes and families. PETA consulted with government officials, secured placement, and pledged $1 million toward the monkeys’ lifetime care in sanctuaries.
PETA will not stop fighting to help animals abused by the deadly monkey importation industry. Join us and take action below to urge the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to shut down the monkey-abduction pipeline.
Original post:
The more than 1,000 endangered long-tailed macaques allegedly illegally brought to the U.S. from Cambodia need your help today. PETA and Born Free USA are operating in good faith—but apparently the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is not. The monkeys, imported from Cambodia by animal testing giant Charles River Laboratories, should be given the chance to go to the Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary in Texas, and the feds have to step up to make that happen.
PETA wants the government to stop stalling and come to an agreement now for the release of these monkeys and to compel Charles River to pay for their lifetime care. PETA demands to know where these monkeys are and why, since they can’t be returned to their natural homes or used in meaningless experiments, they are apparently still languishing in barren steel cages in laboratories.
The secretary of the interior must take action now and direct the Fish & Wildlife Service to arrange for the lifetime cost and care of these monkeys’ sanctuary. Under no circumstances should Charles River, which has enjoyed hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with the U.S. government and is under federal criminal and civil investigation for possible violations of monkey-importation laws, be allowed to profit off the animals or send them to another country.
