Trump regime & labs at odds: where does monkey demand go from here?

(Beth Clifton collage)

FDA boss Makary says agency is “replacing animal testing,”  but lab monkey suppliers are expanding full speed ahead

WASHINGTON D.C.,  CAMBRIDGE,  Massachusetts––Guessing which way the monkey business goes from here amid Donald Trump administration budget cuts and policy moves may be riskier right now than trying to outguess the stock market.

Laboratory demand for monkeys has soared over the past 20 years.  The major breeders and importers of monkeys for biomedical research appear to be betting heavily that high demand for monkeys even at prices of $60,000 apiece will continue for long enough to warrant expanding facilities,  both in the U.S. and abroad.

[See Lab chimp retirement upstages steep rise in monkey use and Will “monkey shortage” due to COVID-19 bring new research methods?]

Wayne Pacelle at Chimp Haven sanctuary for ex-NIH chimps in Lousiana.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Wayne Pacelle:  “Regional primate research centers will lose usefulness”

Yet U.S. Food & Drug Administration commissioner Martin Makary on April 10, 2025 announced that the FDA is “replacing animal testing,”  including testing on monkeys.

“Laboratory animal breeding labs are going to wither unless they change their business practices,  the regional primate research centers will lose much of their usefulness,  and there will be an explosion in innovation in biotech grounded on human biology and artificial intelligence,”  Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle projected at an April 15,  2025 media conference.

Pacelle clearly took Makary’s statement at face value.

Yet,  to the extent that monkeys are involved in FDA work,  the Makary statement was somewhat old news.

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White Coat Waste Project already declared victory ––in 2023

White Coat Waste Project has boasted since September 13,  2023 of having “laid waste to the FDA’s top primate lab and slashed FDA’s monkey testing by 63%.

“The Food and Drug Administration’s top primate lab shut down all of its tests in addition to its monkey breeding program,”  White Coat Waste Project claimed.

But did this actually slow overall laboratory demand for monkeys?

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PETA “uncovered another shady deal by monkey peddlers”

On February 18,  2025,  about 60 days preceding the Makary announcement,  People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] declared that it “has uncovered another shady deal by monkey peddlers who want to turn more than 70 acres of ecologically sensitive land in LaBelle,  Florida,  into a massive monkey warehouse.  The planned facility,”  built to house as many as 20,000 macaques,   “would receive newly imported monkeys from Vietnam destined for use in cruel and deadly experiments.

“If this sounds all too familiar to you,  that’s because it is,”  PETA continued.

“Safer Human Medicine,  the same company that PETA exposed for attempting to build a massive monkey farm in the tiny town of Bainbridge,  Georgia,  is behind this disastrous plan,  too,”  PETA said.

[See Monkey business invades Brazoria, Texas, & Bainbridge, Georgia and The devil went down to Georgia,  looking to breed macaques for labs.]

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Safer Human Medicine”

“The deceptively named Safer Human Medicine,”  PETA explained,  “was formed by former executives from Envigo and Charles River Laboratories—companies that profit from animal misery and have faced federal investigations for alleged violations of monkey importation laws.

[See Crocodile tears in the monkey labs as Charles River suspends imports.]

“Apparently,  to distance themselves from this reputation and escape the barrage of backlash from locals and legal troubles they face in Georgia,”  PETA alleged,  “they’ve rebranded again.  This time,  they’re operating under the newly incorporated SIMI United States, LLC,  to purchase land in LaBelle,  located between Tampa and Miami,”  where monkey breeding for laboratory use is already a long established business.

[See Factory-farming monkeys is A-OK with Hendry County brass.]

(PETA photo)

“Monkeys infected with tuberculosis”

“Vietnam is a major source of monkeys infected with tuberculosis and is under scrutiny by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora,”  the PETA statement added.

Charged PETA senior science advisor on primate issues Lisa Jones-Engel,  Ph.D.,  “If this massive facility moves forward, it would be the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere,  fueling unprecedented animal suffering and serious environmental risks.”

There seems to be,  at least so far,  no hint that SIMI United States,  LLC,  might scrap the LaBelle project due to declining demand for monkeys.

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“Kill now,  buy more later”

Indeed,  several Donald Trump administration actions may result in extensive euthanasia of macaques in laboratories in the near future,  followed by increased acquisition of macaques later on to replace those used in experiments that have been terminated temporarily be budget cuts,  only to be restarted later.

First came waves of firings of federal personnel,  especially those on “probationary status,”  in their first two years of employment by the various agencies that use animals in laboratories.

This disproportionately hit laboratory animal care technicians,  who tend to be the personnel in labs with the least seniority.

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Layoffs

As result of Department of Health & Human Services restructuring,  DVM 360 editor Caitlin McCafferty reported on April 7,  2025,  the Food & Drug Administration “will ultimately lose 3,500 full-time employees,  the Centers for Disease Control will decrease by 2,400,  and the National Institutes of Health by 1,200 employees.”

At minimum that means far fewer people to look after laboratory animals,  necessitating euthanasia to downsize animal inventories.

More recently,  reported Taylor Romine,  Lex Harvey,  Chris Boyette and Lauren Mascarenhas for CNN on April 16, 2025,  “Harvard University professors are grappling with difficult––sometimes life or death––decisions,  after being ordered to stop their research this week when the Trump administration froze more than $2.2 billion in funding over the university’s refusal to bow down to policy demands.

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Harvard

“Harvard School of Public Health professor Sarah Fortune has been researching tuberculosis for over a decade,”  the CNN team mentioned.  “She received a stop-work order this week on a $60 million contract involving more than a dozen labs at schools across the country.

“Part of that research involves a vaccine study on a group of primates in Pittsburgh whose lives are now on the line.”

Altogether,  83 primates reportedly may be euthanized due to loss of funding for the halted TB studies.

“While it’s possible researchers will garner enough external support to save those animals,”  CNN continued,  Fortune “says there simply isn’t an alternative funding source large enough to support the entire research program.

“It isn’t just Harvard University jobs on the line,”  the CNN team said.  “More than 80% of the money that comes through her tuberculosis contract is funneled to other labs and schools — including the University of Pittsburgh,  Case Western Reserve University,  the University of Washington,  UMass and MIT,  Fortune estimates.”

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“Slow to scale technologies”

Animal Politics blogger Ed Boks on April 20,  2025 criticized Harvard University,  “the wealthiest academic institution on earth,”  for what he called “a startling lack of contingency planning,  a failure to modernize research methodologies,  and a leadership more inclined to litigate than lead.

“More than half (58%) of Harvard’s sponsored research relies on federal grants,”  Boks wrote.  “Yet when the freeze hit,  just $39 million in unrestricted reserves were available to bridge the gap—less than 0.1% of the university’s $53 billion endowment. Administrators declined to reallocate funds to preserve key projects,  even as animal care and critical diagnostics faced collapse.

“While federal agencies like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the FDA invest in non-animal methods—awarding $37 million to Harvard’s own Wyss Institute for organ-on-chip platforms—the university has been slow to scale such technologies institution-wide,”  Boks charged.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Primate use increased 18% since 2022″

“Its official policy to ‘replace animals with non-animal models whenever possible’ remains aspirational,  not operational.  Harvard’s 2025 Institutional Animal Care reports reveal a troubling reality,”  Boks noted.

“Primate use increased 18% since 2022 despite internal law school petitions to end macaque experiments.

“Mouse colonies expanded to 112,000 annually – exceeding 1999 projections by 12%”

[See “Stop torturing baby monkeys!” Harvard Animal Law Clinic tells Harvard Med.]

            Monkey suppliers to laboratories appear to betting that monkey demand will soon return to business as usual.  But what if it does not?

(Save the Chimps photo)

Chimpanzee precedent

The biomedical research and animal advocacy communities already went through a similar episode,  on a smaller scale,  involving chimpanzees bred for HIV research during the 1980s.

The number of chimpanzees under National Institutes of Health control approximately doubled from 1980 to 1990,  peaking at about 700,  but when chimpanzees proved to be poor models for HIV,  the NIH struggled for 35 years,  and is struggling still,  to fund and fund sanctuary homes for them all.

Euthanizing the chimpanzees,  even if that had been a politically viable option,  was and is not an option for the NIH because of the possibility that some chimps might develop HIV symptoms late in life,  long after laboratory exposure.

In that event,  the NIH wanted the option of recalling the chimpanzees from sanctuary placements to resumed research.  But few sanctuaries agreed to accepting chimps for sanctuary care under that condition,  knowing that many and perhaps most donors would balk at a sanctuary in effect becoming a holding facility for the NIH.

(Beth Clifton collage)

The macaque population under control of the NIH is around 150 times larger than the NIH chimp population was at peak,  meaning that if macaque use in laboratories declines or even stops,  housing the surviving macaques will be a markedly greater problem,  even though each macaque is only a fraction of the size of each chimp.

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