For Fast Launch:
January 2, 2024
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Brazoria County, Texas – PETA has uncovered plans by Charles River Laboratories, the most important importer of monkeys used for laboratory experiments, to construct the most important monkey-holding facility outdoors Asia—able to housing 43,000 primates—and the corporate is pursuing building on ecologically delicate land in Texas regardless of the objections of native residents and elected officers.
Credit score: PETA
In March, Charles River bought 500 acres bordering land owned and guarded by The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the San Bernard Nationwide Wildlife Refuge. It did so below a special firm title and hasn’t disclosed the plans publicly.
PETA joined with native residents who got here out in drive in opposition to the plans, shifting the Brazoria County Board of Commissioners on November 28 to unanimously undertake a decision recommending that state and federal authorities not subject the wanted environmental permits to Charles River. Paperwork obtained by PETA present that different county personnel have met with firm representatives and have recognized the extent of the plans for months.
“Charles River is proposing the most important moral, environmental, and scientific disaster in American historical past,” says PETA primate scientist Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “PETA applauds Brazoria County officers for taking steps to dam this harmful plan and urges federal and state authorities to do the identical.”
The present largest monkey-holding facility—owned by Envigo and situated in Alice, Texas—confines 6,000 to 11,000 monkeys. It creates an estimated 22,000 gallons of liquid waste per day. The power was constructed to deal with solely a 3rd of this quantity, so the corporate hauls as much as 16 truckloads every day to a wastewater website in Austin. In contrast, Charles River’s proposed facility would produce an estimated 100,000 gallons of liquid waste day-after-day, posing a serious danger of environmental injury to the federally protected salt marshes, lakes, and coastal prairies that border the property.
The proposed facility would introduce monkeys’ saliva, blood, and different bodily fluids into the atmosphere. Monkeys utilized by the experimentation trade are recognized to hold and transmit a slew of nasty pathogens and illnesses, together with herpes B virus, tuberculosis, Ebola-like viruses, simian hemorrhagic fever virus, shigellosis, salmonellosis, Campylobacter, malaria, and dengue. There’s additionally a danger that monkeys might escape, which has occurred at different primate laboratories in Texas.
Charles River is presently below civil and prison investigation by the U.S. Division of Justice for violations of the Endangered Species and Lacey acts. The corporate additionally not too long ago acknowledged that it’s below investigation by the Enforcement Division of the U.S. Securities and Change Fee associated to its sourcing of monkeys from Asia.
PETA—whose motto reads, partly, that “animals are usually not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For extra data on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please go to PETA.org, take heed to The PETA Podcast, or comply with the group on X (previously Twitter), Fb, or Instagram.
