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His demeanor is professional, and voice is soft-spoken. You’d simply never know from this compelling disguise that Jeff Rowell makes monkey torture devices for a living.

Primate Products President Jeff Rowell (source: Andrew West, News-Press)

Among the cruelest devices are monkey restrainers and pole & collar systems. According to Primate Products, restrainers provide “trouble free accessibility,” and poles and collars, which are used to handle primates, help the monkeys to “quickly learn their role and become willing workers, reducing the need to physically handle the animal by force or use anesthetic restraint.”

According to Primate Products, the restrainer provides “trouble-free accessibility”

Following is footage that shows a lab worker using the pole and collar to transfer a monkey from her cage into the restraining device:

Primate Products is one of several companies at the center of the MonkeyGate scandal in Florida’s Hendry County, which, in spite of protests by local residents, is aiming to become the national hub for monkey breeding facilities that sell monkeys to labs for experiments.

Monkeys at Primate Products (source: Andrew West, News-Press)

In March, a reporter with Wink News informed the County Administrator, Charles Chapman, that Primate Products was conducting “experiments and tests” at its monkey breeding facility in spite of zoning laws which prohibited such activities. In response, Mr. Chapman sent a letter to Panther Tracks, Primate Products’ parent company, informing them of an investigation and asking for an explanation.

Hendry County officials to investigate Primate Products

On April 15th, Jeff Rowell issued a response to the county claiming that Primate Products’ activities are, in fact, permitted under the agricultural zoning. The County has not yet publicly addressed Primate Products’ response.

Wild monkey in Mauritius, one of three locations where Primate Products acquires monkeys to breed and sell (photo: BUAV)

A partially completed expansion on the land owned by Primate Products

In his letter to Hendry County, Mr. Rowell also fails to address allegations by a whistleblower who accused the company of assigning c-section abortions to vet techs, instead of veterinarians. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), “Veterinary technicians cannot diagnose, prescribe, perform surgery, or engage in any activity prohibited by a state’s veterinary practice act.”

Primate Products performed the c-section abortions on pregnant monkeys to harvest and sell the organs of the dead fetuses and to sell the milk from the lactating mothers.

Prior to joining Primate Products, Jeff Rowell was the Director of Research at the University of Louisiana’s New Iberia Research Center. Undercover footage taken at the research center exposed such extreme cruelty under Rowell’s watch that the NIH ceased funding and removed 110 NIH-owned chimpanzees from the facility.

https://youtu.be/ZzbAjTpC1EQ?list=PL35D3D11FDEFFBA00

Please ask Hendry County’s five commissioners to stop the expansion of Primate Products pending county and/or state investigations: bocc1@hendryfla.net, bocc2@hendryfla.net, bocc3@hendryfla.net, bocc4@hendryfla.net, bocc5@hendryfla.net

Just four months after filing a lawsuit against Hendry County, Florida, for approving a monkey breeding facility without soliciting public comment, local residents discovered that County officials secretly approved another monkey breeding facility.

On Tuesday morning, they are holding a press conference at the Hendry County courthouse to express their outrage about the illegal lack of transparency as well as their grave concerns about the public safety and animal cruelty issues associated with the secret facilities. They will also ask what other secrets County officials are hiding from tax-paying residents.

Hendry County residents discovered a second monkey facility secretly approved by local officials.

Jane Velez-Mitchell of JaneUnchained recently traveled from New York to Florida to speak to residents who say they are determined to prevent Hendry County from becoming the nation’s capital for the importation and breeding of lab monkeys.

The plaintiffs in the case against Hendry, who are being represented by the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), claim that County officials not only violated Florida’s Sunshine Law, which requires the County to hold a public hearing on matters that affect the community, but also broke zoning laws by illegally approving a wild monkey operation on land zoned for agricultural use. When ALDF filed the lawsuit, residents were not yet aware that the County had, behind closed doors, approved a second monkey breeding facility.

Residents gather at Hendry County administrative building to protest secret monkey breeding facilities

The facility that is the subject of the ALDF lawsuit, Primera Science Center, is being built by PreLabs, an Illinois-based company which reportedly intends to import 3,200 macaque monkeys from Mauritius, an island off the east coast of Africa.

Primera Science Center, a monkey breeding facility under construction in Hendry County, FL.

The newly-discovered facility has already been built and is owned by the Mauritius-based company Bioculture. Bioculture is leasing land from Primate Products, a company that breeds monkeys and manufactures equipment for use in monkey labs. Area residents, who are determined to shut down this facility, do not know if Bioculture has already imported monkeys, and the company’s Sales & Marketing Director refused to answer any questions when TheirTurn reached him by phone. But the residents’ efforts are not without precedent. In 2012, the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico ruled that Bioculture’s already-constucted monkey breeding facility in Puerto Rico could not be opened because it was illegally built on land that was zoned for other purposes.

Residents are waging a battle against Hendry County officials to prevent their community from becoming the nation’s monkey breeding capital

The Animal Rights Foundation of Florida (ARFF), which has worked for years to prevent these facilities from being approved, believes that Air France, the only commercial airline that transports monkeys, will ship the animals from Mauritius for both PreLabs and Bioculture.

Actor James Cromwell participates in PETA protest against Air France at Los Angeles airport

Bioculture kidnaps and breeds macaques in Mauritius and sells them to monkey breeding facilities

Hendry County residents fear that the presence of thousands of exotic animals poses a safety hazard for the community. And their concerns are not unfounded. In early March, the CDC began conducting an investigation at the Tulane National Primate Research Center where monkeys died after being exposed to deadly bacteria that was mysteriously released from a separate, high security section of the lab.

Tulane National Primate Center (photo: Ellis Lucia)

According to Allison Young, an investigative reporter with USA Today, biosafety lapses have been reported all across the country, including at the Center for Disease Control, “They’ve had incidents involving Ebola, anthrax, and a very deadly strain of bird flu.”

Florida already has a population of hundreds of non-native wild macaque monkeys. Over the past 10 years, wildlife officials, who describe the animals as a “public health hazard,” have captured 700 of them. The majority of these monkeys tested positive for the herpes-B virus.

Wild, non-native macaque monkey in Silver Springs, FL (photo: Graham McGeorge)

The ALDF’s lawsuit against Hendry County is ongoing. Area residents are now meeting to discuss how to handle the newly discovered Bioculture facility.

1. Local residents have organized a press conference on Tuesday morning at 9:00 a.m. in front of the Hendry County courthouse. Please spread the word so that local residents and advocates attend.

2. Please sign this form letter demanding that Air France stops transporting monkeys for lab experiments. And please boycott Air France until it does. All of the world’s other major commercial airlines refuse to transport monkeys to breeding facilities and laboratories.