Feds Slap Valley Biosystems With Official Warning for Animal Welfare Violations Resulting in Strangulation Deaths of Monkeys: PETA Statement

For Immediate Release:
June 5, 2025

Contact:
Brandi Pharris 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from Amy Meyer, Associate Director of Primate Experimentation Campaigns at PETA, regarding a just-posted enforcement action taken by the U.S. Department of Agriculture against Valley Biosystems, a contract testing laboratory in West Sacramento. The facility, which used 371 monkeys in experiments and confined another 1,247 monkeys last year, has received an Official Warning, a rare occurrence reserved for the most egregious offenses. The agency’s action follows USDA’s earlier pair of critical violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act at the laboratory for incidents in which two monkeys died by strangulation in separate incidents:

The warning won’t undo the trauma and agony endured by monkeys at Valley Biosystems—where one monkey died after their clunky metal collar became entangled with their cage perch and another strangled on a chain they were able to pull into their cage—but it shows the contract testing laboratory is either unwilling or incapable of following the bare minimum animal welfare standards stipulated by law. Valley Biosystems must end ethically bankrupt and scientifically flawed experiments on animals and implement superior, animal-free methods, which are outlined in PETA scientists’ practical roadmap, Research Modernization Now.

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.