For Instant Launch:
August 11, 2023
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Atlanta – PETA is urging officers to bar Emory College from acquiring any new monkeys after the varsity was cited for violating federal regulation by permitting caged monkeys to stay in unsanitary circumstances for as much as three months and blaming a staffing scarcity.
In a letter despatched right this moment, PETA is asking the U.S. Division of Agriculture (USDA) to stop the college from breeding or buying any new monkeys in gentle of its insufficient staffing. PETA additionally filed a grievance with the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, urging it to analyze the varsity’s noncompliance with federal animal welfare requirements.
The USDA cited Emory for utilizing a labor scarcity as an excuse to depart caged monkeys in their very own filth for as much as 12 weeks, saying insufficient staffing isn’t an excuse for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act, which requires that not more than two weeks go between cage sanitizations. The feds additionally cited the college due to an incident through which a monkey died after her head grew to become caught in a niche in an outside enclosure.
“If Emory can’t discover sufficient individuals to scrub cages or preserve animals secure, the very last thing it ought to do is purchase extra primates,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is looking on federal officers to analyze and block Emory from roping in new victims and asks the varsity to take this staffing scarcity as an indication that no one needs to work in a monkey-abusing laboratory.”
Labor shortages that delay cage cleansing—designed to stop dust, meals scraps, excrement, and different waste from accumulating and doubtlessly harming animals in addition to posing a illness threat to people—might simply contribute to different deficits in animal care, equivalent to inadequate well being checks and an absence of meals and water.
The college has a lengthy historical past of flouting legal guidelines. Monkeys have died from hunger, strangulation, suffocation, heatstroke, choking on their very own vomit, self-mutilation, being scalded to demise, trauma, shock, and sepsis. The USDA beforehand investigated Emory following a grievance from PETA {that a} surgical sponge had been left in a monkey’s physique for 4 months after workers subjected her to a C-section surgical procedure.
For extra details about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please go to PETA.org, hearken to The PETA Podcast, or comply with the group on Twitter, Fb, or Instagram.
