The recent escape of several research monkeys after the truck that was transporting them overturned on the Mississippi Interstate It's the latest look at the secretive animal research industry and the processes that keep key details of what happened hidden from the public.
Three monkeys remained at large after crashing Tuesday in a rural area along Interstate 59, scattering wooden boxes marked “live monkeys” into the tall grass near the highway. Since then, searchers wearing masks, face shields and other protective gear have been scouring nearby fields and forests for the missing primates. Five of the 21 rhesus monkeys on board were killed during a searchAccording to the local sheriff, but it is unclear how it happened.
Mississippi authorities have not released the name of the driver, the company involved in transporting the monkeys, where the monkeys were going or who owns them. Although Tulane University in New Orleans acknowledged that the monkeys were housed at its National Biomedical Research Center in Covington, Louisiana, it said it did not own them and would not determine who owned them.
Animal advocates say questions surrounding the Mississippi disaster and the mystery of why the animals traveled across the South are puzzling.
“When a truck carrying 21 monkeys crashes on a public highway, the community has a right to know who these animals belonged to, where they were sent, and what diseases they may have been exposed to and contracted simply by being involved in the primate experimentation industry,” said Lisa Jones-Engel, senior scientific adviser for primate experimentation at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
“It is highly unusual and deeply troubling that Tulane refuses to identify its partner in this shipment,” Jones-Engel added.
Transporting experimental animals typically requires legally binding contracts that prevent the parties involved from disclosing information, Tulane University said in a statement to The Associated Press. This is for the safety of animals and to protect privacy, the University of New Orleans said.
“To Tulane's knowledge, the 13 recovered animals remain in the possession of their owner and are en route to their original destination,” the statement said.
The disaster has sparked a range of reactions, from conspiracy theories that suggest a government plot to make people sick, to serious backlash from people who oppose animal experimentation.
“How incredibly sad and wrong,” Republican US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said of the disaster.
“I have never met a taxpayer who wants to see their hard-earned dollars spent on animal cruelty and who doesn’t support it,” the Georgia congresswoman said. post on social platform X. “This needs to end!”
The Tulane Covington Center receives $35 million annually in National Institutes of Health support and partners with nearly 500 researchers at more than 155 institutions around the world, the school said in an Oct. 9 press release. The center has been funded by the NIH since 1964, and federal grants are an important source of income for the institution, the release said.
In July, some of the research center's 350 employees held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the opening of a new 10,000-square-foot office building and a new laboratory on site. This fall, the institution's name was changed from the Tulane National Primate Research Center to the Tulane National Biomedical Research Center to reflect its broader mission, university officials announced.
The Mississippi disaster is one of at least three major monkey escapes in the United States in the past four years.
Last November 43 rhesus monkeys escaped from a farm in South Carolina where they are being bred for medical research after the enclosure was not completely locked. Employees from Object Alpha Genesis in Yemassee, South Carolina, traps were set to catch them. However, some spent two months that winter living in the forest and enduring a rare snowstorm. By the end of January, the last four fugitives were caught after being lured back into captivity with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
In January 2022 several cynomolgus monkeys escaped when a truck towing a trailer containing about 100 animals collided with a dump truck on a Pennsylvania highway, authorities said. The monkeys were taken to a quarantine center at an undisclosed location after arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on a flight from Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, authorities said. A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said all the animals were accounted for within about a day, although three were euthanized for unknown reasons.
