Georgia residents are fighting efforts to build a massive monkey-breeding facility in their city
A plan to build a massive monkey-breeding facility that could eventually house 30,000 long-tailed macaques in a small Georgia city has sparked a multipronged legal battle pitting residents against a company whose executives have faced scrutiny for their past handling of animals destined for medical research.
A plan to build a massive monkey-breeding facility that could eventually house 30,000 long-tailed macaques in a small Georgia city has sparked a multipronged legal battle pitting residents against a company whose executives have faced scrutiny for their past handling of animals destined for medical research.
The fate of the facility is in the hands of the Georgia Court of Appeals, which will consider Thursday whether to overturn the validation for a bond that the city of Bainbridge promised to Safer Human Medicine, a company started by animal research industry veterans. It received the bond after Bainbridge leaders greenlighted the project in December.
But in the ensuing months residents, with help from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, began to push back against the project.
“It feels like somebody’s going to drop a bomb in the middle of everything that we’ve worked and built,” said lifelong Bainbridge resident June Faircloth. “We can’t sit back and let it happen.”
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