The recent escape of several research monkeys after a truck carrying them overturned on a Mississippi interstate is 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 on the loose after Tuesday’s crash in a rural area along Interstate 59, spilling wooden crates labeled “live monkeys” into tall grass near the highway. Since then, searchers wearing masks, face shields and other protective gear have scoured nearby fields and forests for the missing primates. According to the local sheriff, five of the 21 rhesus macaques on board died during the search, but it is not clear how that happened.
Mississippi authorities have not released the name of the driver, the monkey transport company, where the monkeys were taken or who owns them. Although Tulane University in New Orleans acknowledged that the monkeys were housed at the National Biomedical Research Center in Covington, Louisiana, it said it did not own them and would not identify who owned them.
The questions surrounding the Mississippi disaster and the mystery of why the animals traveled south are fascinating, animal advocates say.
“When a truck carrying 21 monkeys crashes on a public highway, the community has a right to know who owned those animals, where they were sent, and what diseases they may have encountered and contracted simply by being exposed to the primate industry,” said Lisa Jones-Engel, senior research adviser on 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 research animals typically requires legally binding contracts that prevent the parties involved from disclosing information, Tulane University said in a statement to The Associated Press. The New Orleans-based university said this was done to protect animals and protect proprietary information.
“To Tulane’s knowledge, the 13 recovered animals remain in the custody of their owners and are en route to their original destination,” the statement said.
The accident has sparked a range of reactions, from conspiracy theories suggesting a government conspiracy to make people sick to serious backlash from people who oppose animal experiments.
“How incredibly sad and wrong,” U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican, said of the crash.
“I have never met a taxpayer who wants their hard-earned dollars to pay for animal abuse, or who supports it,” the Georgia congresswoman posted on the social platform X. “This has to stop!
Tulane’s Covington Center receives $35 million annually in support from the National Institutes of Health and partners with nearly 500 researchers from more than 155 institutions worldwide, the school said in an Oct. 9 statement. in a press release. The center has been funded by the NIH since 1964, and federal grants are a significant source of income for the institution.
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 new lab. This fall, the facility changed its name 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 U.S. in the past four years.
Last November, 43 rhesus macaques escaped from a compound in South Carolina where they are bred for medical research after the enclosure was not fully locked. Workers at the Alpha Genesis plant in Yemassee, South Carolina set up traps to capture them. But some spent two months that winter living in the woods and braving a rare snowstorm. In late January, the last four escapees were captured after being lured into captivity with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
in 2022 In January, several macaque monkeys escaped when a truck hauling a trailer of about 100 animals collided with a dump truck on a Pennsylvania highway, officials said. The monkeys were directed to a quarantine facility 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 spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said all the animals were accounted for in about a day, but three were euthanized for undisclosed reasons.