A PETA representative will join local residents Tuesday at the Decatur County Board of Commissioners meeting to voice concerns about the many risks to the region posed by a plan to build the largest monkey warehouse in the U.S. The event comes a week after concerned residents packed a Bainbridge City Council meeting to oppose the plan. Many local residents are demanding that state and local officials stop it.

When:    Tuesday, January 23, 7 p.m.

Where:    Decatur County Administrative Office, 203 W. Broughton St., Bainbridge

“County officials have been misled about the dangers that this facility represents,” says PETA Manager of Primate Experimentation Campaigns Amy Meyer, who will attend the meeting. “Monkeys aren’t required for pharmaceutical testing, the demand for them is dropping, the jobs would be risky, and the monkeys would suffer terribly.”

Land cleared for the proposed facility. Credit: PETA

The planned facility would be capable of holding 30,000 monkeys—twice the human population of Bainbridge—who would be trucked in, warehoused, and trucked out to laboratories to be poisoned, mutilated, and killed. Infectious diseases are common in monkeys imported for experimentation, and at full capacity, the facility would produce more than enough wastewater to nearly fill an Olympic-size pool every day. Yet city and county officials have welcomed the proposed facility, agreeing to nearly $60 million in handouts—including a 20-year tax abatement scheme and $2 million in public land, located less than half a mile from the Flint River, which provides farmers with water for crop irrigation and ultimately flows into the Gulf of Mexico.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness.

For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.