Montréal Mayor Is Urged to Intervene Over Charles River Laboratories’ Law-Flouting Monkey Transport

For Immediate Release:
August 20, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner, 202-483-7382

In a letter sent today, French and English versions linked here, PETA and a host of other animal protection organizations are urging Montréal Mayor Valérie Plante to take immediate action to stop the flow of endangered monkeys—and the associated disease risk—into Canada by global experimentation giant Charles River Laboratories.

Charles River representatives apparently persuaded the Canadian Transportation Agency to allow an illegal shipment of long-tailed macaques—an endangered species—into Canada on August 10 after denying it entry the day before.

A SkyTaxi cargo plane took off from Cambodia carrying hundreds of primates from a squalid monkey farm—some likely harbouring dangerous zoonotic pathogens—and stopped at an airport in Tbilisi, Georgia, before planning to continue on to Montréal, near the site of a Charles River facility.

But the agency denied SkyTaxi entry because the airline is permitted to enter Canada only from Poland. The agency then reversed its decision and allowed the plane entry, apparently after meeting with Charles River.

Meanwhile, the monkeys were held in cramped wooden crates for days amid their own waste. It’s unclear how many of them survived.

A SkyTaxi plane unloads monkeys in Belgium. Credit: Animal Rights

“Terrified, endangered monkeys endured more than 47 sweltering hours crammed in a cargo hold of an airplane, only for the survivors to be shuttled to a facility where the next stage of torment will begin,” says PETA primate scientist Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “PETA calls on Mayor Plante to address the public health risk that monkeys caught up in the wildlife trade pose to her community and demands that government officials stop abetting Charles River’s monkey imports.”

When U.S. officials cut off Charles River’s ability to bring monkeys from Cambodia into the U.S., the company pivoted to Canada. It has relied on SkyTaxi, a tiny Poland-based cargo carrier that’s one of the only airlines in the world willing to shuttle endangered monkeys around the globe to their eventual torment and death in laboratories. Records show that more than 6,000 endangered monkeys valued at more than CA$110 million who originated in Cambodia have entered Canada in the past 19 months.

Charles River is currently under investigation by multiple U.S. agencies, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, for possible violations associated with its monkey-importation business.

Abolición Vivisección, Action for Primates, Cheshire Animal Rights Campaigns, One Voice, and Animal Alliance of Canada are cosigners of PETA’s letter.

PETA 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.