For Quick Launch:
November 2, 2022
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Levy County, Fla. – This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and greater than 4,000 Gulf Hammock–space residents obtained pressing letters from PETA (letter to DeSantis right here and to residents right here) warning them a couple of plan to show Levy County right into a monkey importation middle. The Chinese language firm JOINN Biologics has bought 1,400 acres of land and plans to construct a large facility to obtain and quarantine newly imported monkeys, successfully establishing the county as one other level alongside the harmful and lethal wildlife-trade chain. The monkeys can be offered and trucked to laboratories throughout the U.S. to be used in barbaric experiments.
PETA’s letters name on Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has spoken out in opposition to the ability, and residents to ask him to cease the ability from being constructed. The letters be aware that monkeys within the wildlife commerce are sometimes careworn, injured, and uncovered to pathogens that may unfold to people. Typically pathogens slip by means of with out detection throughout quarantine screening, and a few don’t present up till months or years later—and new, unidentified viruses with pandemic-causing potential are a threat, too. JOINN’s facility, which may home 1000’s of monkeys a 12 months, may introduce monkeys’ urine, feces, and different bodily secretions into the atmosphere, the place different animal species can be affected. Some animals would possibly even escape, as has occurred at different monkey amenities. And earlier this 12 months, a truck transporting monkeys to a quarantine facility crashed and the animals who escaped have been shot due to the worry that they could possibly be carrying harmful pathogens.
“This misguided facility would imply distress for the monkeys warehoused there, and it might put the well being of each Levy County resident in danger,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “We should cease JOINN’s plan earlier than a single brick is laid.”
Lengthy-tailed macaques, one of many species JOINN will most definitely import, at the moment are acknowledged as endangered by the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature—largely as a result of their seize and exploitation as a part of the worldwide wildlife commerce to U.S. laboratories, the place they’re mutilated, poisoned, disadvantaged of meals and water, forcibly immobilized in restraint units, contaminated with painful and lethal illnesses, psychologically tormented, and killed.
The land JOINN bought—in keeping with studies, one of many largest latest Chinese language acquisitions of U.S. land—isn’t zoned for quarantining imported animals, however the firm nonetheless seems to be going forward with its plans.
PETA—whose motto reads, partially, that “animals should not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For extra data on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please go to PETA.org or comply with the group on Twitter, Fb, or Instagram.