‘Murder’ Billboard Blasts Monkey Laboratory
PETA Ad Puts Spotlight on Texas Biomed’s Cruel Primate Experiments
For Immediate Release:
January 7, 2019
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
“If You Call It ‘Medical Research,’ You Can Get Away With Murder.” That’s the message on a new PETA billboard targeting the Southwest National Primate Research Center (SNPRC), where more than 3,000 nonhuman primates—including the world’s largest colony of baboons—are imprisoned for use in cruel and worthless experiments. SNPRC is affiliated with the private Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed).
The billboard is located at 7131 Culebra Rd. (at the intersection with Northwest Loop 410) and will stay up for a month.
“Sensitive, highly intelligent monkeys are caged, cut up, and killed inside Texas Biomed’s laboratory, and taxpayers are footing the bill,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on this facility to relinquish these suffering animals to reputable sanctuaries—and urging the National Institutes of Health to stop bankrolling dead-end animal experiments and to divert research funds to superior, non-animal methods.”
Federal inspection reports from 2018 reveal multiple violations at Texas Biomed, including one incident in which two macaque monkeys were seriously hurt after an employee failed to secure a latch properly on the divider between the monkeys’ cages and a second in which four baboons escaped from the facility. The U.S. Department of Agriculture fined Texas Biomed $25,714 in 2011, following a complaint by PETA, for repeatedly allowing primates to escape from their cages and injure themselves and others, including humans. The facility has also been cited for numerous primate injuries and deaths between 2013 and 2017: Among other incidents, a baboon sustained second-degree burns when he came into contact with a hot pipe, a stressed male baboon attacked a female and killed her infant, and multiple primates died by strangulation in door cables.
The SNPRC is one of seven National Primate Research Centers around the country that are funded by the National Institutes of Health. PETA has already posted its message on billboards near the primate centers in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Oregon, and it plans to target the remainder with its ad campaign, too.
Sen. Cory Booker has introduced legislation (The Primate Protection and Research Modernization Act, S. 3773) that would require laboratories to prove that their proposed experiments on nonhuman primates would actually help humans.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
