You Can’t Rebrand Cruelty: UW Primate Center’s Futile Name Change Proposal

PETA has learned that a few months ago, senior leadership at the University of Washington’s primate center gathered to discuss a new marketing strategy shortly after staff sealed a live baby monkey in a biohazard bag and left the newborn gasping for breath in a cooler.

Rather than address its latest stunning failure, the Washington National Primate Research Center’s leadership discussed rebranding the monkey prison by removing “Primate” from its name, in an apparent effort to distance itself from its decades-long history of animal welfare violations.

The Incident

On June 30, 2025, staff found a newborn macaque at the school’s primate breeding facility in Mesa, Arizona, limp in their mother’s arms and assumed the monkey was dead. Staff took the baby from the mother, sealed the monkey in a biohazard bag, and put the bag in a cooler.

No one noticed the baby was still alive and breathing. Nearly an hour later, staff found the infant gasping and snorting for any final breaths of air. Staff then euthanized the baby.

The Cover-Up

Two weeks later, Washington National Primate Research Center’s senior leadership and senior experimenters were hard at work—not to improve animal safety, or address staffing failures or veterinary accountability, but on rebranding their cruelty. 

Records obtained by PETA show that on July 17, 2025, primate center staff discussed removing “Primate” from the center’s name, believing it would improve fundraising, reduce political exposure, and align with shifting federal priorities away from cruel experiments on animals.

The primate center’s leadership agreed that the name change should happen “sooner rather than later,” apparently recognizing the need to distance itself from the growing scrutiny of cruel and ineffective primate experimentation.

Then, three events took place in quick succession:

• On January 12, 2026, the U.S. Department of Agriculture classified the infant monkey’s death as a critical violation of animal welfare regulations, citing failures in veterinary oversight and basic confirmation-of-death procedures.
• On February 11, 2026, the university’s website posted the USDA inspection report with an entry that stripped the key facts and sanitized the incident.
• On February 13, 2026, the university began to move forward with the name change.

A Nationwide Conspiracy

Washington National Primate Research Center’s rebranding is part of a coordinated effort among the seven remaining national primate centers across the U.S. All of the center directors agree it’s important to remove the word “primate”, according to meeting notes obtained by PETA.

Name it whatever you like, but it will not distract from the center’s massive animal body count and years-long rap sheet spanning the gamut of animal torment. It does nothing to address the systemic failures that allowed a living infant to be tossed out like garbage. And it will not help prevent more animals from meeting the same fate.

The Next Steps

PETA urges the University of Washington to follow the lead of its peer institution, Oregon Health & Science University, by working with the National Institutes of Health to end outdated experiments on animals and instead shift toward state-of-the-art research that can help humans.

Please join us and TAKE ACTION to shut down the Washington National Primate Research Center: