Washington — In a letter sent today, PETA urges the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to immediately suspend and ban the import of endangered long-tailed macaques from Cambodia after multiple whistleblowers report that Charles River Laboratories plans to resume the practice.
Endangered long-tailed macaques, destined for export, are confined inside filthy concrete enclosures at a Cambodian monkey farm.
Image obtained by PETA.
Fish and Wildlife Service investigations have identified large-scale smuggling and laundering of wild-caught macaques falsely labeled as captive-bred in the Cambodian primate trade. No monkeys from Cambodia have entered the U.S. bound for laboratories since early 2023. High-risk pathogens have been consistently found in multiple shipments of monkeys, posing serious public health risks. The long-tailed macaque was also recently reaffirmed to be endangered due to a 50–70 percent population decline over the past three decades, fueled in part by the experimentation industry’s voracious demand for monkeys.
It appears Charles River, the largest breeder and supplier of monkeys for experimentation, has a relationship with former Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, who oversaw FWS during its investigation into the Cambodian primate trade. Photos in Cambodian publications show Bernhardt touring Cambodian monkey breeding facilities with Charles River executive Kevin McNelly in March. Bernhardt recently formed Actual Resources Solutions LLC, which is reportedly arranging upcoming shipments of monkeys from Cambodia. Bernhardt’s company also spent $80,000 from July through September lobbying Congress on “issues related to supply chain services.”
“Long-tailed macaques are highly intelligent beings with complex social structures, but they’re being driven to extinction by the animal experimentation industry and through apparent unethical backroom deals,” says PETA Senior Science Advisor on Primate Experimentation Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “PETA urges FWS and the CDC to suspend Cambodian long-tailed macaque imports immediately and conduct a full review of the policies and relationships that allow these imports to persist, despite documented risk to both human and animal lives.”
PETA encourages the public to help protect long-tailed macaque populations by urging the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to shut down the monkey importation pipeline.
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 PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.