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Primate Products, a company at the center of the MonkeyGate scandal in Hendry County, Florida, has consistently lied to and misled the public since the media began reporting on its activities, which critics describe as “illegal.” The company, which breeds monkeys for experiments and manufactures equipment for primate labs, maintained in a recent letter to the County that it has consistently obeyed the law, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Monkeys at Primate Products (source: News-Press)

As the public waits to see if and how the County disciplines Primate Products for violating zoning laws, TheirTurn is highlighting several ways in which the company has deceived the public:

The Surgeries – In March, a whistleblower reported that Primate Products cut fetuses out of pregnant monkeys in order to harvest and sell their organs. When confronted with this information, the County administrator said that procedures violate by zoning laws, and he sent a letter to the company asking that it disclose all of its activities. In its response letter, Primate Products not only claims that the c-section abortions are permitted under the agricultural zoning but also minimizes the invasive surgeries by referring to them as the “collection of fetal tissue.”

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

The whistleblower also reported that Primate Products illegally assigned the c-section abortions to vet techs instead of veterinarians. Vet techs are neither trained nor licensed to perform surgery. The company again dismissed the allegations, telling a reporter with the News Press that its business is exempt from the law.

The Expansion – In an effort to present Primate Products as an ethical company that prioritizes the interests of the monkeys, Primate Products stated in its letter to the County that it abides by the 3 “Rs” of research – reduction, refinement and replacement. However, the growth of Primate Products’ breeding business depends exclusively on increasing the number of monkeys used in labs. Furthermore, if Primate Products is determined to decrease the number of monkeys used in research, it would not be working to import thousands of additional monkeys for an expansion on its property.

A partially completed expansion of monkey breeding facilities on the land owned by Primate Products

The Monkeys – In its letter to Hendry County, Primate Products wrote that the company imported only captive-bred monkeys. When the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida (ARFF) uncovered USDA documents proving that the company imported wild caught monkeys, Primate Products was forced to admit to the lie.

In a recent interview with the News Press, the President of Primate Products, Jeff Rowell, justified monkey captivity by saying that the animals are safe from poachers. Yet poaching is precisely how Primate Products  acquired many of its monkeys in the first place.

Animal rights activists in Florida protest Primate Products

Monkey breeding facilities and labs are among the world’s most unsafe places for monkeys

The only monkeys who are potentially safe in Florida are those who have escaped from Primate Products and other Hendry County-based monkey breeding facilities, though these escapes pose a public health risk to Florida’s human population and to the nearby Everglades where escaped monkeys can breed, become an invasive species and compromise the ecosystem. Primate Products says the last monkey escape took place three years ago.

Hundreds of non-native wild macaque monkeys with herpes B virus live in Florida (photo: Graham McGeorge/Barcroft Media)

The Tenant – Primate Products has leased land to Bioculture, which is also a monkey breeding company, even though it was expelled from Puerto Rico because its breeding facility there violated zoning laws. Can Primate Products really be trusted if it is leasing land to a company with this type of history?

Sign at Bioculture gate states that the company does “testing” and “research,”  which violate zoning laws

Perhaps Primate Products feels secure in lying to and deceiving the public because the company believes that the County will protect it. After all, the company has, according to WinkNews, made “large contributions” to the county. According to residents, these donations were substantial enough for county officials to approve a massive “expansion” of Primate Products without informing the public, as required by Florida’s Sunshine Law. But now that the story has become a scandal that people around the world are following, can the County continue to turn a blind eye to the illegal activities that have been conducted inside?

On Tuesday, April 28th, the Hendry County Board of Commissioners is holding a public meeting. If you live near Labelle, Florida, please attend in order to be a voice for the monkeys.

Please share this “MonkeyGate” Facebook page with people you know in Central and South Florida: Put an End Hendry County Monkey Breeding Facilities.

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

Ady Gil, a Los Angeles-based philanthropist and animal rights activist, has spent $2 million to purchase 1,300 monkeys on the verge of being sold to laboratories around the world. The long-tailed macaques were the last of monkeys at Mazor Farms, a primate breeding facility that supplies monkeys for experiments. Several hundred of Mazor’s monkeys were snatched from the jungle in Mauritius, an island off the coast of Africa, and shipped in crates to Israel. The remainder were bred in captivity.

Journalist Jane Velez-Mitchell spoke to Mr. Gil about his historic purchase:

According to activists with Behind Closed Doors, who have been fighting for 20 years to shut down Mazor Farms, infant monkeys born at the facility are kidnapped from their mothers and held in separate enclosures so that they can be bred as quickly as possible. The separation is traumatic for the infants and their mothers, who cry out for them. Those who survive are tattooed, sold for $3,000 each, stuffed into crates and shipped to labs for toxicology studies or invasive brain studies, which, according to the Israeli activists, is “a fate worse than death.”

Photo: Alon Ron, Haaretz

Mazor Farms has been the target of Israeli animal rights activists for 20 years. In recent years, they have had some success with curbing Mazor’s operations. In 2010, the Israeli airline El-Al agreed to stop transporting animals for experimentation after video emerged of monkeys suffering in crates. In 2011, the Israeli government banned the importation of wild caught monkeys. In 2012, activists took to the streets of Tel Aviv in a dramatic protest to shine a spotlight on the atrocities committed at Mazor Farms and the labs where their monkeys are shipped:

Thanks to the generosity and vision of Ady Gil, Mazor Farms is closed for good. The monkeys will be sent to sanctuaries in Israel that are being expanded to meet the demand.

Ady Gil spent a stunning $2 million to free the monkeys, but his foundation will need help paying to expand an existing sanctuary and for lifelong care of these monkeys. Please visit Ady Gil World Conservation to see how you can help give these monkeys a second chance.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) has filed a lawsuit against a county in Central Florida for failing to hold a public hearing about the construction of a 32 acre monkey breeding facility.

Hendry County, FL

In a statement to the press, Hendry County claims that seeking public input for an “agriculture” facility is not required by law. Some locals suspect that the County intentionally kept the project a secret, knowing that members of the public would oppose the presence of monkeys who could carry infectious diseases in residential area. Florida already has a population over 1,000 non-native wild macaques, many of whom carry the hepatitis B virus, according to published reports.

Primera and SoFlo Ag cannot be reached

Primera Science Center, the company building the breeding center, reportedly intends to transport 3,200 macaque monkeys from Mauritius, an island off the coast of Africa, to Florida, where they will be bred and sold to laboratories for use in experiments. The macaques, who will presumably have direct contact with workers, can carry infectious diseases like tuberculosis and hepatitis.

Photo: buav.org

Dwight Bullard, the State Senator who represents the area, has called for the project to be delayed until Primera and Hendry County provide more information about how public safety will be protected: “We are calling on Primera to hold a public meeting with the state and federal agencies that will be involved in the safety and care of these primates during their time at this facility. If primates get loose, what does that mean to the surrounding counties in terms of potential outbreaks?”

In a statement to the press, Primera says it “is in full compliance with the rules, guidelines and laws at the local, state and federal levels” and that it “is committed to meeting the highest standards with the utmost respect for the safety and preservation of the surrounding environment and its residents.”

To see the lawsuit in its entirety and the statement released by Hendry County in response to the suit, please visit news-press.com.

Please ask Hendry County officials to halt the construction of Primera’s monkey breeding facility until the County and company provide the public with an answers to its questions and gives local residents the opportunity to provide input at a public hearing.

Phone: 863-675-5220

Email: welcome@hendryfla.net

One month after a whistle blower at Princeton sent PETA an internal email describing the callous abuse of a lab monkey, the University issued a statement claiming they found “no evidence to support allegations of animal mistreatment.” The internal email, which was sent by a psychology professor to his lab workers after he learned that they rolled at least one marmoset monkey down the hall in a ferret exercise ball, stated: “The marmosets are not in the lab for your amusement. . . We are forcing them into experimental contexts that they wouldn’t otherwise choose because that is the only way that we can address our scientific questions. To force them into contexts for which there is no scientific justification is reprehensible and, frankly, unethical.”

In its statement, Princeton denied wrongdoing, stating its “investigation determined that a researcher had placed a single marmoset in a ferret exercise ball to explore use of the ball by marmosets during research projects. . . The ball was observed while on a track and on the floor, where it rolled slowly for a short distance.”

Marmoset

While Princeton won’t admit to animal cruelty in this case, it must be acknowledging prior abuse or the potential for abuse by describing steps it has taken in recent years to strengthen its animal care, including “hiring additional professional staff with expertise in laboratory animal medicine” and “creating a new Office of Research Integrity and Assurance.” Of course, no amount of reform will make it acceptable to hold animals captive in lab cages, depriving them of everything that comes naturally to them and experimenting on their bodies. Animal experimentation must and will eventually be banned with the help of organizations like Stop Animal Experimentation Now.

According to a report released by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), activists campaigning against animal experimentation are targeting the individuals involved in the research because prote sting against the universities has proven to be ineffective. In response to the shifting tactics, FASEB is advising researchers to limit the amount of personal information they share online and advising universities to assemble a “crisis management team” comprised to respond to incidents. Eric Bernthal from HSUS responded to the report asking why the reason for attacks isn’t being explored and adds, “If you’re going to give advice to researchers about how to solve this problem, the most constructive way is to use fewer animals in research, not assemble crisis communication teams.”

Vivisection protest in Spain

In university labs across the country, researchers receive government grants to imprison and cut open live monkeys in order to conduct what are often redundant, unnecessary, painful and deadly behavior studies. It’s a very big business. Locking up animals in cages and experimenting on their bodies are cruel and unjustifiable practices. To see how you can help end animal testing, please visit Stop Animal Exploitation Now (SAEN).