Monkey Importer Inotiv, Under Investigation by the SEC, Cites Decline in Sales: PETA Statement

For Immediate Release:
May 16, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA primate scientist Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel regarding yesterday’s statement, with an update filed today, to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by Inotiv, one of the largest importers of monkeys for laboratory experiments. The company, one of several implicated in a recent international monkey-smuggling trial has withdrawn profit projections for 2024, citing uncertainty in the demand for monkeys and that sales of monkeys have “decreased significantly”:

The walls are closing in around the deadly monkey-importation industry and one of its major players. Inotiv’s latest filings, including the news that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which has escalated its probe into a formal investigation of the company, show that there’s no future in the trade of monkeys for laboratory use.

Inotiv indicated that companies may be shifting away from the use of monkeys in experiments and that plummeting profits from monkey sales represent a trend that “may continue.” It certainly will because unscrupulous companies making billions by trading in monkeys often can’t prove that the primates were imported legally—and the pharmaceutical industry is moving away from the use of animals.

Ticktock, Inotiv. It’s time to get out of the monkey-import business entirely, stop wiping monkey species off the face of the Earth, and start supporting the modern, non-animal methods outlined in PETA’s Research Modernization Deal.

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.