PETA has been making a easy level loud and clear: Importing 1000’s of monkeys from abroad dramatically will increase the danger of spreading nasty ailments able to leaping from animals to people.
Now we’ve been proved proper.
The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) has simply launched statistics exhibiting that between 2010 and 2020 there have been no instances of tuberculosis (TB) detected amongst imported monkeys. However from 2021 to 2023, such shipments revealed a surprising enhance in confirmed TB instances—together with a pressure of the illness by no means earlier than seen in animals within the U.S.
In a single cargo, 26 monkeys have been contaminated. To underscore the purpose: This represents the most important proportion of those animals contaminated with TB—a nasty illness readily transmissible to people and different species—in any cargo into the U.S. up to now.
PETA knew there was a TB outbreak at a monkey farm in Mauritius, an island nation off the coast of southeastern Africa that provides monkeys for U.S. laboratories. We uncovered paperwork revealing an outbreak in a Michigan laboratory. However the brand new pressure that the CDC has recognized is completely different and has arrived in monkeys from a wholly completely different a part of the world.
PETA obtained paperwork exhibiting that the 26 contaminated monkeys have been possible introduced into the U.S. by Charles River Laboratories as a part of a cargo of 540 monkeys imported from Vietnam to Houston. PETA is urgent Charles River CEO James Foster to substantiate whether or not the corporate is chargeable for the cargo.
It’s additionally not the primary time monkeys contaminated with TB have been imported to North American labs. Monkeys from Cambodia have additionally arrived contaminated with a bacterium so lethal that the U.S. classifies it as a bioterrorism agent.
PETA is urging the CDC to behave by itself proof and cease monkey importation. If the CDC takes severely its mandate to maintain People protected from ailments, it should shut the doorways on monkey importation—proper now.
Please take motion and urge the CDC to cease monkey importation instantly: