Records Reveal Crippling Debt, Crumbling Infrastructure; PETA Calls on UW to Close Its Monkey Facilities

For Immediate Release:
September 11, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Mesa, Ariz. — PETA delivered a letter to the University of Washington’s (UW) Board of Regents at its meeting today, urging it to immediately shut down the Washington National Primate Research Center, starting with its monkey breeding colony in Mesa, Arizona.

PETA obtained internal communications among UW primate and research staff revealing the colony is financially unsustainable, chronically understaffed, and plagued by deteriorating infrastructure. Leadership at the primate center has also considered closing it or transferring the monkeys elsewhere, all while U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) citations for serious animal welfare violations pile up. Internal communications also suggest the facility may still be affected by toxic soil and water contamination from the nearby shuttered Nammo Defense Systems Inc. rocket-testing site.

The documents obtained by PETA show that the primate center has been financially underwater since 1998, with mounting deficits rippling across both its Seattle monkey colony and the Arizona Breeding Colony. At the Arizona facility, more than 400 endangered monkeys are left in the care of too few veterinarians amid crumbling infrastructure—problems that UW’s own leadership has acknowledged are unsustainable.

The USDA has cited UW’s primate facilities 27 times in the past decade. Six violations were announced in August 2025, including for mistakenly administering a more virulent strain of influenza to monkeys for nearly two years, leading to severe illness and even early death for one of the monkeys. Federal inspectors also documented broken cages, unsafe housing, protocol breaches, overdoses, and botched surgeries.  

USDA inspection photos of the hospital room in the Arizona Breeding Colony. UW has received approximately $30 million from the National Institutes of Health for this facility since 2012. Image obtained through a public records request by PETA.

“The Arizona monkey facility has been unsafe and neglected for years, and UW leadership and Board have known it and failed to act,” says PETA Senior Science Advisor on Primate Issues Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “PETA urges UW’s regents to close it, send the monkeys to sanctuaries, and redirect taxpayer money to state-of-the-art, animal-free research that will actually help humans.”

The primate center’s leadership has been plagued by scandal and instability. Experimenter Michele Basso was appointed director in 2021 despite a decades-long record of botched monkey surgeries, repeated clashes with veterinarians, and a reputation for disregarding oversight. Basso was ousted from her position in 2024 following a letter from PETA to UW’s Board of Regents.

In July, UW’s animal oversight committee, in a rare decision, suspended Basso’s experiments because of her repeated violations of animal welfare regulations and her refusal to take direction from veterinarians and committee members.

Internal documents also show that animal welfare violations have continued under Deborah Fuller, the primate center’s replacement director.

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 PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.