LEAKED VIDEO: Monkeys Caged in Squalor Inside Largest U.S. Primate Laboratory
For Immediate Release:
March 23, 2026
Contact:
Brandi Pharris 202-483-7382
After receiving video revealing terrified monkeys confined to kitchen cabinet-sized cages with urine, feces, and rotting food piling up beneath them, PETA today filed a complaint urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to investigate the New Iberia Research Center, operated by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and sent a letter to the National Institutes of Health urging them to suspend all funding to the facility. The center is the nation’s largest primate laboratory, confining 12,000 monkeys, with multiple contracts from big pharmaceutical companies and millions in government grants.
The video shows long-tailed macaques, rhesus macaques, and African green monkeys—highly social species who form large, stable groups and maintain lifelong relationships in their natural homes—stacked in cages in small windowless rooms without bedding and with little or no enrichment. Many of the animals have extensive hair loss, an indicator of chronic stress. Rhesus macaque mothers and their infants cling to each other in tiny cages, with one female showing significant hair loss and visible head wounds. African green monkeys are stuffed into barren breeding enclosures. Broadcast-quality video is available upon request.
“The New Iberia Research Center depicted in the video looks like it produces misery, not science,” says PETA Chief Science Advisor on Primate Experimentation Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “These appalling conditions drive psychological distress, physical deterioration, and disease risk in animals who are entirely dependent on human care.”
Whistleblower footage reveals monkeys confined to cramped, barren steel cages in a windowless room, above filth and pools of standing water—promoting disease spread and endangering animals and staff. An unknown liquid, possibly urine, pools beneath cages suspended from the walls in the squalid rooms. Basic sanitation appears to have broken down.
Federal inspectors have cited New Iberia for violating the Animal Welfare Act following the deaths of infant monkeys from dehydration, a monkey who was electrocuted, and for broken or dilapidated cages that contribute to repeated escapes. The USDA recently cited the university when 19 monkeys died after being confined outside, unprotected, in sub-freezing weather. Authorities have imposed substantial fines of more than $158,000.
In nature, macaques live in large, tight-knit groups, travel several miles each day exploring diverse habitats, and cuddle together in their favorite “sleeping trees” at night.
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.
