Georgia residents are fighting efforts to build a massive monkey breeding facility in their city

A plan to build a massive monkey breeding facility that could eventually house 30,000 long-tailed macaques in a small Georgia town has sparked a multi-faceted legal battle that pits residents against a company whose executives have faced scrutiny for their past handling of animals destined for medical research. .

The fate of the facility is in the hands of the Georgia Court of Appeals, which will consider Thursday whether to void validation of a bond the city of Bainbridge promised to Safer Human Medicine, a company founded by veterans of the animal research industry. . Received the title after Bainbridge leaders gave the green light to the project in December.

But in the following months residents, with the help of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, began to fight back against the project.

“It feels like someone is going to drop a bomb in the middle of everything we’ve worked for and built,” said longtime Bainbridge resident June Faircloth. “We can’t sit back and let this happen.”

It is not the first project of its kind to draw local opposition – with support from PETA – at a time when researchers say they are running out of monkeys for medical testing. Long-tailed macaques are among the most common monkeys used in research in the US, and while monkeys are used in a fraction of one percent of animal studiesresearchers say they are critical.

A monkey breeding facility in Brazoria County, Texas, planned by the company Charles River Laboratories was put on hold this year, following the emergence of PETA-backed local opposition. PETA also backed down after a Chinese company bought land in Florida a few years ago for a possible primate facility – the plan ended up being discarded.

The battles highlight how animal rights activists, along with residents, have had some success in opposing the new facilities, despite scientists’ ongoing needs.

Animal testing for research purposes has a long history – as well as opposition to it. And while many scientists have advocated for more humane treatment of animals used in research, they have also warned that stopping such research would seriously hinder many medical advances. Animal testing is regulated in the USA by the Animal Welfare Act from 1966.

Paul Johnson, director of the Emory National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, said monkey research has helped develop Covid vaccines, an HIV vaccine that is in clinical trials, and belatacept, a drug used in kidney transplants.

The test can be traumatic for the monkeys. Some are sacrificed, while others go through studies.

“We studied monkeys because their brains are very similar to human brains,” Johnson said.

In Bainbridge, a town of about 14,000 people in the southwest corner of Georgia, residents began joining the monkey project after the December vote.

Faircloth, one of the main organizers of the Bainbridge resistance, has transformed her interior design office into a hub for community members fighting to, in her words, “Stop Monkey Farm” – with posters, pamphlets and hats interspersed among flooring and fabrics. Many protested and spoke at town halls. Some set up a website it is a Facebook group which has grown to over a thousand members. And every Tuesday night, they get together and pray.

Residents have expressed concerns about the facility itself with the possibility of monkeys escaping – which has occasionally happened. has happened at other facilities across the U.S., including one run by Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, though with no reports of harm to nearby residents.

“We are looking at a jungle: noise, bad smells and the possibility of disease,” said Penny Reynolds, who lives across from the land set aside for the facility in Bainbridge.

Safer Human Medicine assured residents that it would take every precaution to ensure that all waste was contained at its facilities and sent to the city’s wastewater treatment plant. He also said that most of the noise would remain within the premises and that there would not be a “noticeable smell”.

Greg Westergaard, CEO of monkey breeder Alpha Genesis, says a lot goes into creating monkey breeding facilities.

“There is a lot of training involved; there is a huge amount of infrastructure involved,” he said. “It will smell bad and you will have runoff from cleaning.”

Bainbridge residents pointed to the backgrounds of some of Safer Human Medicine’s executives — two of whom previously held leadership roles at companies that have come under scrutiny — as reasons to doubt their commitment.

Safer Human Medicine CEO Jim Harkness was the chief operating officer of Envigo, a company that pleaded guilty last week neglect thousands of dogs and agreed to pay a record Fine of US$35 million. Chief Operating Officer Kurt Derfler left his job at Charles River Laboratories last year, just a few months after the Department of Justice subpoenaed him as part of your investigation possible smuggling of wild monkeys from Cambodia. Charles River Laboratories said at the time that any concerns about his role were “without merit.”

Neither Harkness nor Derfler have been charged individually in connection with these cases.

Safer Human Medicine declined interview requests. He said in an email: “Envigo was operating during unprecedented circumstances brought on by the pandemic.” She added: “We have been committed to operating responsibly and ethically in this field for decades and will continue to do just that.”

Safer Human Medicine said it would not use wild-caught monkeys – which can transmit viruses such as herpes B. The monkeys would come from Asia, he said, without specifying where.

Community organizing in Bainbridge turned the tide. Rick McCaskill, executive director of the Bainbridge and Decatur County Development Authority, said what was once considered a “tremendous investment” of almost US$400 million and 260 jobs quickly turned sour. After community backlash emerged, Bainbridge leaders voted in February to rescind its support for the Safer Human Medicine project.

“We felt that the division and unrest in the community outweighed the benefits of the project,” McCaskill said.

Research monkeys are bred at the seven National Primate Research Centers, each with its own breeding colony, as well as other facilities across the country. National Primate Research Centers often use rhesus macaques, while pharmaceutical companies tend to use long-tailed macaques — the type Safer Human Medicine plans to breed.

There has been some movement away from animal testing for drug development, which was already required by the USA. In 2022, President Joe Biden signed the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, allowing alternatives to animals whenever possible. This year, several members of Congress presented a bill to go a step further – and make it easier to move away from animal research.

“It will likely be a range of alternatives, from AI to computer models to organs on a chip,” said Jim Newman, communications director for Americans for Medical Progress, a group that advocates for medical testing on animals when necessary. “But what we currently have available can only reduce animals so far.”

For now, researchers still rely on monkeys for some tests, and some animal researchers say the U.S. is experiencing a shortage of long-tailed macaques — reporting a more than 20% drop in imports in 2020 after China cut its exports. Long-tailed macaque prices are said to be skyrocketing.

Safer Human Medicine says it sees the planned facilities as a response to the shortage. He said he would start with 500 to 1,000 monkeys and increase. He said the money to build the facility would come from industry and private financing in the US. I would not disclose names.

It’s not entirely clear how much of the community is against the installation. Some local politicians who campaigned in opposition did not win in recent elections, although it is not clear that their defeats had anything to do with these positions.

Still, Faircloth said his group has no plans to back down.

“If we don’t stand up for our rights, we will simply be run over,” she said. “We simply can’t let that happen.”

This article was originally published in NBCNews. with