PETA has learned from a whistleblower that a monkey who had just endured a 28-hour flight from the other side of the world in a wooden shipping crate arrived at an import facility in Florida and ended up in a dumpster.
What should have happened —according to the rules of this archaic and vile system—was that the monkey be moved from the wooden shipping crate into an individual metal cage at the facility for CDC-mandated quarantine. Instead, according to the whistleblower, the monkey, still inside their crate, was placed alive into a biohazard trash dumpster.
The monkey remained trapped in the dumpster for days, undetected and alone, without food or water. The dumpster was then picked up and trucked two hours away to Stericycle, a waste facility in Miami.
No one knew the monkey was missing. Clearly, no one checked. There was no accounting, no one ticked a box, and apparently no census was ever taken while a living being was thrown in a dumpster, without food and water—FOR FIVE DAYS.
The dumpster was opened on the fifth day at the waste facility, freeing the terrified monkey, who escaped before being captured and returned to the importer’s site.
The mind-boggling enormity of this incompetence makes it difficult to list the number of federal, state, and local violations, but there are plenty. PETA is demanding investigations by numerous federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
How…Just, How?
The monkey’s horrid journey began on Tuesday, January 27, when a SkyTaxi plane brought a shipment of monkeys from Mauritius, off the eastern coast of southern Africa, known for massive outbreaks of tuberculosis in monkey farms, to Miami. The flight, which included two layovers, took 28 hours and 35 minutes.
Crates of terrified monkeys were loaded onto trucks and taken to a facility run by BC US LLC, a monkey breeder and laboratory supplier in Immokalee, Florida, about an hour southeast of Fort Myers. BC US staff put the monkeys into quarantine cages and tossed the wooden shipping crates into a dumpster.
Staff never noticed one monkey was still in the shipping crate. The biohazard garbage truck picked up the dumpster on Friday, January 30, and took it back to its facility in Miami, where it remained over the weekend. The dumpster was unloaded on Monday, February 2, freeing the monkey.
If BC US had done nothing more than count the monkeys and place each one into an individual metal cage to begin CDC-mandated quarantine, this never would have happened — yet there is no evidence they do even that.
PETA knows about this one incident because of a whistleblower, but who knows how many others have also been “lost” because of this no-account, lackadaisical callousness? And how many people have been exposed to potentially dangerous pathogens, since none of these monkeys have yet cleared mandatory quarantine?
What You Can Do
This is only the latest incident showing the malice, incompetence, and danger that runs through the cruel monkey importation pipeline, rooted in greed and serving only to prop up a dying industry.
Please TAKE ACTION and urge the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to shut down this monkey-abduction pipeline.
The post Lost in “Quarantine”: A Newly Imported Monkey, Missing for Five Days appeared first on PETA.