Council members didn’t directly respond to the concerns on Tuesday, as reported by WALB-TV.
Safer Human Medicine is led by executives who used to work for two other companies that supply animals for medical testing. One of those companies, Charles River Laboratories, was investigated last year for getting wild monkeys smuggled from Cambodia.
Federal prosecutors claimed that the monkeys were falsely labeled as bred in captivity, as required by U.S. rules. The company stopped shipments from Cambodia.
Charles River had suggested a similar facility in Brazoria County, Texas, south of Houston, but it faced local opposition and hasn’t progressed.
The Bainbridge facility aims to be a local source of monkeys to reduce imports, according to the company. Researchers use these animals to test drugs before human trials and study infectious diseases and chronic conditions like brain disorders.
Safer Human Medicine sent an open letter to the Bainbridge community saying, “After 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 your neighbors. Many of the medicines in your medical cabinets today would not exist without this essential medical research and without these primates, research comes to a halt.”
However, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and some local residents are worried about the chance of monkeys getting out into the neighborhood and causing other problems.
Ted Lee, a local, told WALB-TV, “They’re an invasive species and 30,000 of them, we’d just be overrun with monkeys.”
Lisa Jones-Engel, who advises PETA on primate experiments, mentioned that there’s a chance local people might get exposed to harmful germs and illnesses.
“In a bid to attract a few jobs — many of them low-paying and risking exposure to zoonotic diseases — city and county officials have rolled out the red carpet for an unethical plan by some questionable characters that could spell ecological disaster and potentially spark the next pandemic,” Jones-Engel stated in a statement last week.
“PETA urges Bainbridge officials to withdraw their support and shut down this project before a shovel hits the dirt,” she wrote.
The organization and community’s complaints are unfounded, according to the firm and local officials.
The Development Authority of Bainbridge & Decatur County’s executive director, Rick McCaskill, stated that there are few hazards because the monkeys will be handled by veterinarians and skilled personnel.
“There are going to be a lot of monkeys, there’s no question. We got more cows in the county then we got people too, and we got more chickens in the county then we have people too,” McCaskill stated.
Property tax incentives for the project were approved by local officials in December; they will be waived for the first ten years and then progressively reduced until the conclusion of the 20-year period.
