Feds Slap Primate Prison With Heavy Fine
There’s good news today in a case we told you about in May 2010: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has hit the Texas Biomedical Research Institute—formerly the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research—with a fine of more than $25,000 over serious violations of the Animal Welfare Act. The facility has repeatedly allowed primates to escape from their cages and injure themselves and others, including humans.
The stiff fine comes after PETA filed a formal complaint with the agency in 2010 after two baboons imprisoned at Texas Biomed escaped from their cages, injuring an employee in the process. The fine also covers an incident from 2009 in which a juvenile rhesus macaque monkey escaped from a cage and then spent the night in below-freezing temperatures. He suffered from hypothermia and had to be euthanized.
But quite apart from the satisfaction of seeing these primate torturers pay at least a small price for their misdeeds, these penalties are an important reminder to heartless experimenters everywhere that abusing animals can cost them more than karma points.
But since karma is on our side, let’s keep the momentum going. Texas Biomed is notorious for being one of the last laboratories in the world that still torments chimpanzees in cruel and invasive experiments.
You can do your part to help protect primates—just click here to ask your congressional representatives to cosponsor and support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act today, which would end experiments on chimpanzees at Texas Biomed and elsewhere.
