Retired FDA research monkeys find new home in Florida
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

White Coat Waste Project
December 2018

The FDA ended nicotine-addiction studies on baby monkeys and just now retired them to a sanctuary — where they belong!

FDA has never retired primates before after government experimentation!

In fact, most puppies, kittens and primates in government labs are slaughtered and incinerated like trash.

Thank you for your support that made this happen. GO HERE to Defund Primate Tests.

From Jacqueline Howard, CNN.com, December 4, 2018:

Squirrel monkey chirps filled a small ranch-style building in north Gainesville, Florida -- a chorus that made Kari Bagnall's smile swell even wider.

She covered her grin with a medical mask, calmly walked to the middle of a climate-controlled room and greeted each of the 26 monkeys. There were about three to each large cage. Poppit and Pixel jumped over each other when Kari passed by. Gizmo looked up with wide eyes. Pip let out a tiny chirp.

Then there was Oak. Despite pain from rheumatoid arthritis, his energy was about as high as the others'. Bagnall stopped interacting with the other monkeys to look directly at him. She squinted, homed in on his hands and then shifted her shoulders back with satisfaction. "He looks good," she said.

Oak and the other monkeys arrived in mid-November at Jungle Friends, this primate sanctuary in Gainesville where Bagnall serves as founder and director.

The monkeys were once involved in a US Food and Drug Administration study intended to investigate the role of various levels of nicotine in the onset of addiction in teens and young adults.

In January, after the deaths of four monkeys involved in the research drew criticism from some animal rights activists, the agency ended the study. The 26 remaining monkeys were retired to Jungle Friends, and the FDA quickly established an Animal Welfare Council to oversee all animal research under the agency's purview.

Jungle Friends, founded in 1996, is home to more than 300 new world monkeys and has been asked to take in hundreds of monkeys from research laboratories over the years. The squirrel monkeys are the latest arrivals.

The common squirrel monkey, or Saimiri sciureus, typically can be found in the tropical forests of Central and South America, roaming from Costa Rica through central Brazil and Bolivia. These monkeys typically have a life span of about 20 years. The males weigh between 1.22 and 2.53 pounds on average, and the females average between 1.43 and 2.76 pounds.

When the monkeys arrived, Bagnall said, they all looked "gorgeous" and healthy, needing no serious medical care -- except for Oak, who the FDA had told the sanctuary had a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis and was receiving treatment.

Bagnall thanked the FDA for releasing the monkeys to her sanctuary's care.

"The most special thing about these particular monkeys is that they came out of the FDA, which has not released monkeys out of research in the past -- and we are so happy that now the FDA is opting to retire monkeys after the research has ended. They didn't have to do this," Bagnall said.

Return to Animal Rights Articles