PETA Expert to Join Locals Fighting Monkey Warehouse; New Video Exposes Exec’s Lies

For Immediate Release:
February 12, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Primate scientist and PETA Senior Science Advisor Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel will give a PowerPoint presentation at the Decatur County Board of Commissioners meeting on Tuesday, joining throngs of alarmed residents to urge officials to vote against a plan to build the largest monkey warehouse in the country, capable of holding 30,000 monkeys.

Where:    Decatur County Administrative Office, 203 W. Broughton St., Bainbridge

When:    Tuesday, February 13, 9 a.m.

Dr. Jones-Engel will point out that the leaders of Safer Human Medicine, the company behind the plan, are former executives from Envigo, Charles River Laboratories, and Covance—all animal experimentation companies that profit from suffering and operate facilities that have faced federal investigations and citations for repeated violations of animal welfare regulations.

PETA also released a new video revealing that Jim Harkness, Safer Human Medicine’s CEO and a former Envigo executive, lied to Georgia residents about issues at the company’s beagle-breeding facility in Virginia after a PETA investigation and the violations it exposed led to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation, the closure of the facility, and the release of nearly 4,000 beagles for adoption.

The planned facility would import, breed, and warehouse monkeys destined to be poisoned, mutilated, and killed in pointless laboratory experiments, which are already driving the extinction of the species the company would be importing. The facility would also pose a serious risk of infectious disease and degrade the surrounding environment.

“Everything about this facility is seedy, down to the bullies behind it,” says Jones-Engel. “Officials are running out of time to do the right thing by squashing this scheme before the community that locals know and love is ruined.”

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 (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.