Every year, monkeys are ripped from forests, stuffed into crates, and shipped across the world under falsified paperwork, all to end up in U.S. laboratories where they will not survive. Between 2015 and 2025, close to 285,000 monkeys were imported into the United States, and almost every one of them was sent to a lab and never made it out again.

Most of these animals are long-tailed macaques, a species already listed as endangered. Experts warn their population could fall by half over the next three generations if the demand for lab monkeys keeps driving illegal capture and breeding.

This trade is also built on fraud. A multi-year federal investigation into a single monkey-breeding operation in Cambodia found evidence that it funneled more than 30,000 illegally captured wild monkeys into American companies, all under paperwork claiming they were legally bred in captivity.

And it is not just the monkeys at risk. These animals have carried tuberculosis, drug-resistant infections, and other dangerous pathogens into the country, exposing lab workers and communities to diseases they never agreed to be exposed to.

There is a real fix on the table. Reps. Greg Steube, a Republican, and Dina Titus, a Democrat, have introduced the PRIMATE Act, which would end the import of monkeys for experiments altogether. It is a rare bipartisan agreement on an issue that touches animal cruelty, wildlife trafficking, public health, and outdated science all at once, especially since research shows most drugs that pass animal testing still fail in humans.

Sign the petition to pass the PRIMATE Act now, before more monkeys suffer and more disease risk slips through the cracks.