Feds Issue Official Warning to UC Davis for Monkey Deaths: PETA Statement

For Immediate Release:
March 19, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Science Advisor Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel regarding the Official Warning levied by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) against the University of California-Davis for violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, which resulted in the harrowing deaths of two monkeys in separate incidents at the school’s California National Primate Research Center.

The body count caused by neglect and incompetence at the University of California-Davis’s California National Primate Research Center continues to mount. In 2023, a female rhesus macaque was left unattended in a van with the heat blasting. When workers returned, the monkey—trapped in a stainless steel cage—was unresponsive and had to be euthanized. Another juvenile rhesus macaque was found dead after becoming entangled in a bungee cord that had come loose from an overhead canvas. Despite gobbling $277 million in taxpayer money, the school repeatedly fails to comply with the meager protections provided by federal animal welfare law. The primate center needs to be shut down, but by issuing an official warning instead of imposing fines or stricter penalties, the USDA enables continued misconduct in laboratories that have shown they simply don’t care.

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.