County officials in Bainbridge, Georgia, have rescinded the approval of a $396 million, 200-acre complex that would breed, raise, and store up to 30,000 long-tailed macaques for medical research.
The Decatur County-Bainbridge Industrial Development Authority, the city of Bainbridge, and the Decatur County Board of Education issued a joint statement taking back their support for the facility after the county “voted to disavow the” project “and to reject all tax abatements.”
The statement credited public protest over the project as a part of its decision.
“After hearing from you, we realize that the economic benefits of this project are not worth the divisiveness the project has caused within our community,” the statement read.
When reached for comment, a county official said he couldn’t comment on issues with pending litigation.
According to a local report, officials approved the deal in December 2023 with a 10-year tax abatement for Safer Human Medicine (SHM), the company that was set to build the facility.
However, it was later found that the meeting to approve the facility violated the Open Meetings Act, according to the report, which is why the commissioners voted to rescind it.
Pete Stephens, the Decatur County Commission chairman, said the board was asked to be in a meeting that it was assumed had been posted for the public and press to see, as is required by Open Meeting laws.
However, he said, “That did not happen.”
He later said the board “heard the public outcry.”
“We heard the public saying they didn’t want it here,” Mr. Stephens said. “There have been a lot of comments and questions asked, and we thought it best for the unity of our community to vote against this project.”
PETA’s Steps In
After the approval of the project, residents began protesting its construction at Bainbridge City Council meetings, and eventually, the People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals (PETA) got involved, according to WTXL.Lisa Jones-Engel, a primatologist and senior science advisor for PETA, spoke before the City Council, discussing how diseases can easily be transmitted from monkeys to humans.
A spokesperson for SHM stated WALB on the commissioner’s decision, alleging that the board was influenced by PETA’s attempt “to sow division and misinformation in the Bainbridge community.”
“It is no coincidence that the attempted reversal of these decisions occurred in the days and weeks following the arrival of the Seattle-based lead for PETA’s Primate Experimentation division,” SHM said. “Recall that this same organization protests the use of bulldogs for the UGA mascot and has entire divisions focused on attacking the meat and egg industries, sport fishing, and hunting. While we share their concern for animal welfare – their tactics of sensationalism and character assassination are well-known in our industry as well as many others.”
The board’s initial decision was based on “the facts of the project,” SMH said.
“These retroactive decisions are based on fear and fabrication from a smear campaign propelled by voices outside this community,” SMH said. “The facts of this project still stand, and our decision to move forward stands with it.”
‘Essential Medical Research’
In an open letter from SHM to Decatur County, the company described its mission, which it said is to “help make sure that medical research in the United States is not slowed because scientists and researchers do not have access to non-human primates (meaning cynomolgus macaques, which are a breed of monkeys best suited for medical research).”“In the aftermath of the pandemic, we learned the hard way that our researchers in the U.S. need reliable access to healthy primates to develop and evaluate the safety of potentially life-saving drugs and therapies for you, your family, your friends, and neighbors,” SHM said. “Many of the medicines in your medical cabinets today would not exist without this essential medical research,h and without these primates, research comes to a halt.”
SMH said science hasn’t advanced far enough to move past drug testing on primates.
“Given their genetic similarity to humans, primates provide the most reliable model to demonstrate how a drug will impact our biological systems,” SMH said. “No one would ever imagine giving a drug to a family member, a loved one, or anyone else battling a disease or needing medical attention unless it had been thoroughly evaluated for safety.”
‘Notoriously Unreliable’
In 2021, the White Coat Waste Project (WCWP), an organization that investigates taxpayer-funded experiments on animals, spotlighted a similar facility owned by Charles River Laboratories on Morgan Island in Beaufort, South Carolina, from where the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was acquiring rhesus monkeys on which they were conducting “excruciating experiments.”According to Justin Goodman, the vice president of advocacy and public policy for (WCWP), testing on animals has proven to be “notoriously unreliable.”
“Research shows that despite their similarities to us, they are incredibly poor predictors of how vaccines and other drugs are going to act in humans,” he said.
According to a 2019 study, animal testing used in medical research models is an inefficient predictor of human safety.
“Human subjects have been harmed in the clinical testing of drugs that were deemed safe by animal studies,” it says. “Increasingly, investigators are questioning the scientific merit of animal research.”
