Federal Flip-Flop: FWS Ready to Let Endangered Monkeys Into U.S. From Cambodia

PETA has received credible information from a whistleblower that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, in what would be a mind-bending reversal, is considering allowing a shipment of monkeys into the U.S. from Cambodia. The arranged shipment is reportedly a collaboration between serial animal tormentor Inotiv (which owns Envigo—remember the beagles?) and worldwide monkey dealer Charles River Laboratories.

You read that right.

Inotiv, a shady company with a long rap sheet of doctoring paperwork to pass off monkeys likely snatched from forests as captive-bred to skirt international law—species extinction concerns be damned—is teaming up with Charles River Laboratories, which even today has monkeys from a previous shipment who are in legal limbo.

And the monkeys would be coming from Cambodia, a country at the center of an international monkey-laundering scandal—a scandal Fish & Wildlife personnel testified about at trial!

It’s enough to make your head spin.

Not only would this shipment be quite possibly illegal and definitely a blow to the survival of endangered long-tailed macaques, it would also pose a serious threat to public health. Since 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acknowledged that monkeys imported from Cambodia are a consistent source of dangerous pathogens easily transmittable to humans.

Nothing has suddenly changed after the feds stopped monkey imports from Cambodia two years ago. There is no evidence that either Inotiv or Charles River had a sudden change of heart and is now playing nicely by following international law.

And there is no way Fish & Wildlife can know these monkeys were not illegally captured. There are no new tests, no new guardrails, no new processes. Nothing.

What You Can Do

Please immediately tell the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service not to resume monkey imports from Cambodia.

You can do so by sending polite comments to:

Keith Toomey
Deputy Assistant Director of the Office of Law Enforcement
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
[email protected]

Naimah Aziz
Head of the Division of Management Authority
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
[email protected]; [email protected]

Please feel free to use our sample letter, but remember that using your own words is always more effective.