Kate del Castillo Exposé: Monkeys Abducted From Nature, Sold to U.S. Labs in New PETA Video

For Immediate Release:
July 7, 2022

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

La Reina del Sur star Kate del Castillo is exposing the international primate trade in a new video for PETA revealing how hunters trap mother monkeys, tear away their babies, and stuff them into bags to be shipped to U.S. laboratories, where they’re mutilated, poisoned, starved, forcibly restrained, infected with painful diseases, psychologically tormented, and killed.

“Sick and diseased monkeys … endure invasive surgeries, toxic chemical exposure, and conditions that drive them insane,” says the honorary director of PETA. “All this just for experiments that science itself has shown fail to lead to cures and treatments for humans. … It’s time to shut down this cruel industry.”

The National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration admit that 95% of all new drugs that test safe and effective in animals are either unsafe or ineffective in humans. Yet thousands of monkeys are shipped to the U.S. every year, cruelly confined to cramped wooden crates in airplane cargo holds and trailer trucks for days.

The primate trade also poses a grave public health risk. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admits that the animals “carry infectious diseases that are dangerous and sometimes fatal to humans,” and in a letter sent to the agency, PETA is calling for a ban on monkey imports, citing public health, safety, and conservation risks.

Del Castillo is part of a long list of celebrities—including Penélope Cruz, Joaquin Phoenix, George Lopez, James Cromwell, Taraji P. Henson, and Olivia Munn—who have teamed up with PETA U.S. or international PETA entities to promote kindness to animals. 

PETA U.S.—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on the group’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow it on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.