Monkey-Testing Behemoth’s Dangerous Violations Called Out by PETA in Shareholder Resolutions

For Immediate Release:
November 28, 2022

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA wants the Laboratory Corporation of America (Labcorp) to be honest about its role in the voracious primate experimentation industry and this week will file a shareholder resolution formally requesting more transparency.

PETA’s resolution calls on Labcorp—which owns Covance—to report to shareholders annually on its efforts to prevent the transporting of monkeys without proper veterinary exams.

Labcorp, headquartered locally, moves thousands of monkeys every year on U.S. highways, often over thousands of miles. Federal law requires that a veterinarian examine monkeys transported across state lines within 10 days prior to shipment. In September, following complaints filed by PETA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited Labcorp for violating this law. The company’s failure to conduct timely veterinary inspections jeopardizes public health and safety, as monkeys can carry tuberculosis, deadly diarrheal pathogens, West Nile virus, malaria, Chagas disease, herpes B, and other diseases that are transmissible to humans.

“PETA challenges Labcorp to be accountable to its shareholders for its sloppy practices and above-the-law mentality,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “It should stop tormenting monkeys altogether, but at a minimum, it must abide by the law.”

Labcorp uses thousands of monkeys each year in experiments, the majority of whom are long-tailed macaques, which the International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies as “endangered.” The international trade in long-tailed macaques is steeped in violence, and widespread laundering of wild-caught animals as captive-bred is evident in recent indictments brought by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Covance CEO Paul Kirchgraber has the dubious distinction of topping PETA’s “Dirty Dozen,” which names the 12 worst CEOs for animals in laboratories. PETA is also filing a shareholder resolution with the company that employs the CEO in the number two spot, Charles River Laboratories, calling on it to take similar measures.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—notes that monkeys are still being used in pharmaceutical studies, even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration admits that 95% of all new drugs that test safe and effective in animals are either unsafe or ineffective in humans. PETA scientists’ Research Modernization Deal provides a strategy for replacing animals with modern, human-relevant research methods.

PETA’s shareholder question is available upon request. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.