Bainbridge Residents to Pack Courtroom for Hearing in Lawsuit Over Planned Monkey-Breeding Facility
For Immediate Release:
July 11, 2024
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Throngs of Bainbridge residents wearing shirts reading, “Stop the Monkey Farm!” will fill the Decatur County Courthouse on Tuesday as the deceptively named Safer Human Medicine attempts to intervene in a lawsuit filed by residents who were kept in the dark by local officials about the company’s plans to build the largest monkey warehouse in the U.S. in their town. The proposed facility—which officials voted to approve in violation of Georgia’s Open Meetings Act—would import, breed, and warehouse up to 30,000 monkeys destined to be poisoned, mutilated, and killed in pointless laboratory experiments, risking the spread of infectious diseases and an ecological disaster.
What: Hearing on Safer Human Medicine’s motion to intervene
Where: Decatur County Courthouse, 112 W. Water St., Bainbridge
When: Tuesday, July 16, 9 a.m.
Local officials proceeded recklessly with meetings and approvals that violated the law, apparently with the expectation that Bainbridge residents would simply roll over. But residents are fighting the surreptitious approvals both in the courtroom and on the ground.
Safer Human Medicine is led by former executives from Envigo, which owned a now-defunct beagle-breeding facility in Virginia. Recently, Envigo pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of conspiracy to violate the federal Animal Welfare Act and a felony charge of conspiracy to violate the federal Clean Water Act and was ordered to pay more than $35 million in penalties—including the largest fine ever in an animal welfare case—in a historic plea agreement that followed a PETA undercover investigation.
“The architects of this disastrous monkey-prison scheme have already shown a reckless disregard for the well-being of animals, the environment, and the communities they set up shop in,” says primate scientist and PETA Senior Science Advisor Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “PETA stands in solidarity with the residents of Decatur County as they fight this calamitous proposal.”
The lawsuit was filed by Bainbridge residents June Faircloth, Chad Dollar, Kristina Martin, and Lisa Dasilva after the City of Bainbridge, Decatur County, the Decatur County Board of Education, and the Decatur County Board of Assessors voted to approve a 20-year tax abatement scheme and incentives worth at least $58 million to lure the proposed facility. According to the lawsuit, the agencies failed to publish notices or agendas, record the presence or absence of their members, and identify individual members who voted to approve the project, along with violating Georgia’s Open Meetings Act in other ways.
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.
