International campaign to stop the construction of a primate breeding facility in Puerto Rico

Please support the international campaign to stop the building of a primate breeding facility in Guayama City in Puerto Rico. There is already local opposition to this construction and we want to offer our support by launching an international effort to stop Puerto Rico from becoming a major player in the cruel trade in primates for research. We understand that the project is being led by Bioculture, a primate supply company from Mauritius that ships long-tailed macaques around the world to be used in research.

Such a proposal is highly controversial and is a major step backwards at a time when the ethical and scientific use of nonhuman primates in research is being challenged internationally by scientists as well as others.

Primates are highly intelligent, social animals with complex behavioral and psychological needs. The cruelty and suffering involved in the international trade in primates for research has been well documented; in particular, the injuries and mortalities involved in the capture of monkeys from the wild and the stress and suffering involved in their confinement in captivity. The common fate of many primates in the research industry is to be used in toxicity testing which involves the forced ingestion, inhalation or injection of potentially lethal and poisonous chemicals.

Please help by writing to the following people calling on them to dissociate Puerto Rico from the suffering and cruelty inherent in the trade in primates for research. If the construction is allowed to go ahead then this will not only result in the suffering of thousands of monkeys, it will also have a negative and detrimental impact on Puerto Rico's image abroad.