A concerned couple is donating $250,000 to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and to a sanctuary to provide long-term care of any of the escaped monkeys that the sanctuary receives. It’s their hope that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which owns the animals, will recognize that these monkeys should not be subjected to a lifetime in laboratories. The donors wish to remain anonymous.
This follows PETA and its supporters’ request on Friday to NIH to release all 43 monkeys to accredited sanctuaries. Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary in Texas has already contacted Alpha Genesis and offered to work with it to provide the animals with a suitable home.
“We hope this generous offer will spur NIH to do the right thing and let these monkeys have decent lives,” said PETA primate scientist Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “They deserve to live the way there were intended to—enjoying time with their extended families and not confined to a metal box.”
The monkeys were brought to Alpha Genesis from Morgan Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, where several thousand free-ranging rhesus macaques live. When NIH wants more monkeys to experiment on, they are captured and transferred to Alpha Genesis, which currently has $19 million in contracts with NIH.
Twelve escapes involving 109 monkeys have been documented at Alpha Genesis in the last decade. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has cited the facility for multiple violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, including:
- An infant monkey died after becoming entangled in gauze material used to attach a water bottle to a cage.
- Two monkeys died after their fingers became trapped in structures in their enclosures and no one noticed.
- A monkey died when water was turned off for maintenance and not turned back on.
- A female monkey sustained serious injuries from incompatible, stressed cagemates and was found dead after staff negligently moved her to the wrong enclosure.
- Monkeys left outside or unprotected from frigid weather froze to death.
In January 2023, PETA called on NIH to stop funding Alpha Genesis, and in 2018, following a complaint by PETA, the USDA fined Alpha Genesis $12,500 for serious violations leading to injury and death.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
