Bainbridge Residents File Second Lawsuit to Block Massive Monkey-Breeding Facility
For Immediate Release:
August 14, 2024
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
In an ongoing effort to stop a massive monkey-breeding operation targeting the town of Bainbridge, more than a dozen residents filed a nuisance lawsuit today challenging the proposal—this time citing economic harms and potential odors, noise, pathogens, and dangerous waste leaks from the planned facility as reasons for the court to block its construction.
The plaintiffs—who own properties that border the proposed facility, run businesses that could be negatively impacted by it, or live along the river that it may pollute—detailed the alleged harms that the operation could cause. One resident whose home is next to the proposed site is concerned that the facility would put his children and domestic animals in danger by potentially exposing them to infectious agents.
The lawsuit—which follows one filed by residents in February over violations of Georgia’s Open Meetings Act—names as defendants Safer Human Medicine, the company pushing for the facility’s construction, as well as the Decatur County-Bainbridge Industrial Development Authority and the Development Authority of Bainbridge and Decatur County, the agencies that conspired to push the project forward without the required input from the public.
Jim Harkness, Safer Human Medicine’s CEO, was a former high-ranking executive at Envigo, an animal experimentation company whose now-closed beagle-breeding factory in Virginia was raided by the feds after a PETA exposé. The company recently pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to violate the federal Animal Welfare and Clean Water acts. The latter charge stemmed from Envigo’s poor maintenance of the facility’s wastewater treatment plant, which discharged wastewater into a local waterway. The feds slapped Envigo with more than $35 million in penalties, including $22 million in fines in the first-ever federal convictions of a supplier of animals for experimentation.
“Safer Human Medicine’s CEO was an executive at a company that was found to be in violation of federal animal welfare laws and to be polluting waterways—and there’s no reason to think that he’s changed his ways,” says PETA primate scientist Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “PETA stands with the residents of Bainbridge in rightfully opposing a loud, smelly, and dangerous monkey-breeding operation in their backyard.”
In addition, PETA revealed recently that Harkness lied to Georgia residents about problems at the Virginia facility.
Residents’ earlier lawsuit, which is ongoing, alleges that city and county agencies violated Georgia’s Open Meetings Act when they approved a 20-year tax abatement scheme worth at least $58 million to lure the proposed facility to Bainbridge. It named as defendants the City of Bainbridge, Decatur County, the Decatur County Board of Education, and the Decatur County Board of Assessors.
The planned facility would import, breed, and warehouse up to 30,000 endangered monkeys destined to be poisoned, mutilated, and killed in laboratory experiments.
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.
