PETA Report Challenges Vietnam’s Trade Claims, Points to Alleged Illegal Capture of Monkeys for U.S. Labs

For Immediate Release:
May 19, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA has uncovered evidence of possible corruption and disease risk in Vietnam’s trade in monkeys for use in U.S. laboratories and today releases the findings in a new report, “Vietnam’s Macaque Trade: Inconsistencies, Manipulated Inventory, and Zoonotic Risks.” 

Evidence revealed in PETA’s report strongly suggests macaques are illegally captured from nature and falsely labeled and sold as “captive-bred” to meet the relentless demand for monkeys by overseas experimenters. The release comes a day before monkey importer Charles River Laboratories’ shareholder meeting, which PETA will attend.

PETA calls on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Secretary of the Interior, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to suspend primate imports from Vietnam to the U.S. to protect both monkeys and the public. PETA also calls on Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to preemptively block potential imports from Vietnam before the trade spreads north.

“PETA’s report points to a profit-driven monkey trade contaminated by fraud, cruelty, and disease,” says PETA Senior Science Advisor on Primate Issues Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “PETA urges federal agencies to act now and shut down this reckless trade.”

PETA based the report on statistics obtained and analyzed from public sources, including official documents supplied by Vietnamese breeding farms to the multinational regulatory body that enforces the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES).

PETA’s analysis shows the number of monkeys acquired and sold by Vietnamese breeding farms doesn’t add up. The provenance of more than 4,000 macaques can’t be accounted for, pointing to the probability that farms caught and caged monkeys from their forest homes.  

PETA’s analysis shows that one breeder began 2023 with 4,864 macaques. Based on its reported births, purchases, deaths, and exports, the breeder should have ended the year with 3,579. Instead, it claimed to have 4,449 macaques, an unexplained gain of 870 monkeys. Another facility reported exporting more monkeys than it ever had in its inventory.

Breeding rates were also apparently manipulated, PETA found. One farm submitted two reports with vastly different birth numbers for the same period.

PETA’s report also shows that macaques exported from Vietnam have been directly linked to tuberculosis outbreaks in U.S. and European laboratories, exposing gaping holes in global biosecurity.

U.S. companies, including Envigo and monkey experimentation colossus Charles River Laboratories, have imported more than 9,000 long-tailed macaques from Vietnam in the past two years, often paying more than $10,500 each, fueling a billion-dollar industry of trappers, breeders, importers, airlines, laboratories, and U.S. trucking companies. Charles River has been under investigation for its possible role in a Cambodian monkey laundering scheme. The company has now pivoted to importing many monkeys from Vietnam.

PETA’s report builds on critical findings from Sandy River Research, a group unaffiliated with PETA that conducted an in-depth investigation into the global monkey trade. The Spanish animal protection organization, Abolicion Viviseccion, contributed to the report.

In nature, macaques live in large groups and focus intensely on social relationships. Infant macaques are adored, and female macaques remain in their birth group for life.

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.