Deadly Pathogen Crosses Borders as CITES Loosens Monkey Trade Restrictions: PETA Statement

For Immediate Release:
November 4, 2026

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Chief Science Advisor for Primate Experimentation, Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel, regarding decisions (linked below) by a committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which regulates the global trade in plants and animals, to lift a longstanding ban on the trade of endangered monkeys from Laos and continue allowing the monkey trade in Cambodia, despite ongoing concerns about compliance with previous CITES recommendations in both countries. Leaders of the House Natural Resources Committee also today warned that the U.S. is moving away from its longstanding science-based approach to international wildlife trade and minimizing the risk of disease transmission from live animals, a shift that could increase both wildlife trafficking and zoonotic-disease risks:

PETA strongly opposes the decisions by the CITES standing committee, which abandon its responsibility to protect endangered wildlife, fly in the face of all logic and evidence, and give nefarious monkey traffickers a license to profit from the extinction of long-tailed macaques, while ratcheting up the possibility of a serious public health crisis.

Long-tailed macaques have declined by as much as 70 percent over the past three decades, with demand from the laboratory trade among the threats driving that decline. Yet CITES is allowing trade from Cambodia to continue despite unresolved concerns about wild monkeys entering the commercial supply chain, while lifting longstanding restrictions on Laos despite continuing concerns about wildlife trafficking.

Cambodia has exported to the U.S. and Canada monkeys carrying Burkholderia pseudomallei, the bacterium classified as a bioterrorism agent by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that causes the potentially fatal disease melioidosis. Newly released Canadian government records show that two long-tailed macaques imported in 2024 carried the bacterium. Both infections escaped arrival screening and were discovered only after the monkeys became sick and died. The bacterium has also been found in monkeys imported from Cambodia into the U.S., where PETA has repeatedly pressed the CDC about disease risks from imported monkeys. 

Ahead of its session addressing the risk of zoonotic disease associated with international wildlife trade, PETA urges CITES to enact stronger safeguards and meaningful consequences, including trade suspensions. PETA continues to urge U.S. residents to press their members of Congress to pass the PRIMATE Act, which would ban all imports of monkeys for experimentation.

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.