Watch Now: Worldwide Streaming Premiere of ‘30,000 Monkeys in Our Backyard’ Documentary
When a shady corporation targeted a tiny Georgia town for the site of its new and massive primate prison that would breed, import, and sell monkeys to laboratories, locals joined forces with PETA and fought back. So far, they’ve succeeded.
Today, their story of community, bravery, and resilience is told in the new documentary 30,000 Monkeys in Our Backyard, from executive producer James Cromwell, Emmy award-winning actor and PETA honorary board member. The film is now streaming worldwide for free on YouTube.
Produced by animal advocacy organization Species Unite, the film features emotional first-hand accounts from affected residents and testimonials from PETA’s Senior Science Advisor on Primate Experimentation, Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel, and PETA Associate Director of Primate Experimentation Campaigns, Amy Meyer, as they work to uncover and combat the secretive scheme from the powerful animal experimentation industry.
From Backroom Dealings to Screen
In 2023, an unknown but well-funded corporation—misleadingly named Safer Human Medicine—came to Bainbridge, Georgia, and worked a secret deal with local politicians to build the largest primate import warehouse in the U.S., designed to confine up to 30,000 monkeys for use in the U.S. animal-testing industry.
Alongside PETA, Bainbridge residents leapt to action. They’ve filed lawsuits, packed town hall meetings, placed eye-catching advertisements, and protested the facility that would threaten land use, environmental safety, animal welfare, and quality of life.
But the battle isn’t over yet. Construction of the facility—which would imprison long-tailed macaques, an endangered species, imported from Southeast Asia, where laundering of wild-caught monkeys is common—has been temporarily halted. We continue to stand with residents to ensure this cruel facility is never built.
“I hope that the documentary film shines a global spotlight on the residents’ fight, which I hope they win, and send a message that testing on macaques belongs to the history books, for our sake and theirs.” – Executive producer James Cromwell.
Join the Fight
After monkeys are sold to laboratories, they’re confined to barren cages and stripped of companionship and everything that makes life meaningful for a primate. They are force-fed chemicals, injected with experimental substances, infected with disease, and killed. Yet these experiments have failed to produce marketable vaccines, treatments, or cures for human disease. The monkey abduction pipeline that fills the cages must be stopped.
Watch the documentary and share it with your friends and family.
Then please take action by urging the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop allowing the importation of monkeys for use in cruel and deadly laboratory experiments:
