Monkeys Saved From Colombian Hellhole: CARGO Act Can Prevent More Abuse Abroad

Victories for animals keep rolling in following PETA’s sweeping investigation into decrepit and fraudulent laboratories in Colombia that were bankrolled by $17 million in U.S. taxpayer funds from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). With your help, we can ensure that no foreign organization ever uses NIH grant money to harm animals again.

First up: A Colombian regional environmental authority recently fined experimenters Sócrates Herrera and Myriam Arévalo, the owners of the laboratories, more than $281,000 and established that “animal mistreatment” occurred in those labs. The ruling ensures that the monkeys rescued from the filthy primate facility will never be returned to their abusers.

Next in line: The Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas (CARGO) Act (HR 4757) would put an end to this gravy train flowing from the U.S., ensuring that no animal laboratory abroad receives another cent of taxpayer money.

The CARGO Act’s Worldwide Reach

The bipartisan bill, which was introduced by U.S. Reps. Dina Titus (D-Nev.-01) and Troy Nehls (R-Texas-22), would prevent foreign laboratories from receiving public money from NIH. The agency funneled about $2.2 billion in taxpayer funds to foreign organizations during the decade ending in 2021.Laboratories around the world are devouring fistfuls of taxpayer cash to conduct gruesome experiments on animals. For example, in the Colombian labs, animals were abandoned and left to die from infected wounds and monkeys were forced to live amid their own waste in rusty cages. In Australia, NIH paid experimenters to addict dogs to opioids. In France, the agency paid for monkeys to be blinded. And the list goes on and on.

If passed, the CARGO Act would end the flow of U.S. tax dollars into cruel, pointless, and deadly experiments on animals. Period.

Help Make the CARGO Act a Reality

Please TAKE ACTION now to urge your U.S. representative to cosponsor the CARGO Act:

And if you’re in the U.S., please take an additional action for animals by supporting PETA’s Research Modernization Deal, which outlines a comprehensive strategy for replacing all experiments on animals with more effective, human-relevant, non-animal methods.

From PETA and executive producer Bill Maher, the new docuseries ‘The Failed Experiment’ exposes what most people don’t know about experiments on animals.