Entrepreneurs Offer Funds to Send 43 Macaques Who Broke Free From Laboratory to Sanctuary

For Immediate Release:
November 11, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

A concerned couple is generously donating $250,000 to PETA and to a sanctuary to provide long-term care of any of the escaped monkeys that the sanctuary receives. It’s their hope that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which owns the animals, will recognize that these monkeys, who bravely claimed their freedom, should not be subjected to a lifetime of misery in laboratories. The donors wish to remain anonymous.

This follows PETA and its supporters’ request on Friday to NIH to release all 43 monkeys to accredited sanctuaries. Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary in Texas has already contacted Alpha Genesis and offered to work with it to provide the animals with a suitable home.

“We hope this generous offer will compel NIH to do the right thing allowing these wild monkeys to live out their days in freedom,” say PETA primate scientist Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “They began their lives in the trees with their families, they deserve more than a torturous existence confined to a metal box.”

The monkeys were brought to Alpha Genesis from Morgan Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, where several thousand free-ranging rhesus macaques live. When NIH wants more monkeys to experiment on, they are captured and transferred to Alpha Genesis, which currently has $19 million in contracts with NIH despite its long, dark history of animal welfare issues.

Twelve escapes involving 109 monkeys have been documented at Alpha Genesis in the last decade. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has cited the facility for multiple violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, including:

1. An infant monkey died after becoming entangled in gauze material used to attach a water bottle to a cage.
2. Two monkeys died after their fingers became trapped in structures in their enclosures and no one noticed.
3. A monkey died when water was turned off for maintenance and not turned back on.
4. A female monkey sustained serious injuries from incompatible, stressed cagemates and was found dead after staff negligently moved her to the wrong enclosure.
5. Monkeys left outside or unprotected from frigid weather froze to death.

In January 2023, PETA called on NIH to stop funding Alpha Genesis, and in 2018, following a complaint by PETA, the USDA fined Alpha Genesis $12,500 for serious violations leading to injury and death.

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.