Stop importing monkeys for lab experiments. It's cruel. And it’s dangerous. |
Stop importing monkeys for lab experiments. It’s cruel. And it’s dangerous.
By now, most of you have seen little Punch, a 7-month-old macaque who stole the hearts of animal lovers around the world. But while his viral moment is captivating, it reminds us of a disturbing truth: Monkeys like Punch are captured or bred and shipped into the United States every year, not to be loved, but to disappear into research labs.
One of us is a Republican from New York City. One is a Democrat from Las Vegas. The third is an actress and animal welfare advocate. We do not agree on everything, but we agree on this: It is time to stop importing monkeys for experimentation. So we are calling on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to suspend the practice immediately.
This is not just about compassion for animals, though that alone should be enough. It is about public health, biosecurity, and frankly, about common sense.
For decades, the United States has imported primates by the tens of thousands each year. And taxpayers help fund the whole pipeline: federal permits, quarantine facilities, inspections, and government grants. Yet the benefits for human health are far less clear than supporters claim. Many scientists increasingly question whether primate experiments translate into meaningful human treatments. We are subsidizing something that does not work as promised, while exposing communities to serious risks.
Consider what recently happened in Florida. A monkey imported from Mauritius by a CDC-registered importer was neither properly counted nor secured. For five days, no one realized the animal was gone, until he was found, alive, in a dumpster at a Miami waste facility. The monkey was euthanized. Think about that: A federally monitored lab monkey ended up in the public trash system.
Many of these animals come from densely packed export farms where disease spreads easily. Some facilities funnel wild-caught animals into the export pipeline. Government records show imported primates have carried dangerous viruses, drug-resistant bacteria and parasites. These are not hypothetical risks. Workers have been exposed and infected during transport, quarantine and laboratory handling.
Once they arrive, the animals are trucked across multiple states to laboratories. That means any containment failure, any slip in waste management or transport protocol, can result in pathogens escaping into the environment. The risks do not remain local. Pathogens such as tuberculosis which some of these monkeys arrive carrying, can spill over to cattle or wildlife populations.
We cannot, in good conscience, continue importing pathogen-carrying primates through a system that repeatedly fails at the basics of custody, containment and disease control.
Kennedy has said he will review primate imports. We support that commitment and urge him to go further and suspend them now. An immediate suspension would reduce biosecurity risks, protect workers and communities, and halt a pipeline that is fundamentally unsafe and inhumane.
Continuing to import primates is indefensible on public health, scientific and fiscal grounds. We cannot claim to protect American workers, agriculture, or the integrity of federally-funded science while running a system this broken.
Little Punch made the world smile. The least we can do is make sure no more animals like him are shipped around the world to suffer and die.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis represents New York’s 11th District (Staten Island and Southern Brooklyn). Rep. Dina Titus represents Nevada’s 1st District. Edie Falco is an actress and honorary board member of PETA.
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