Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding citations posted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture against the University of California–Davis for two critical violations of federal animal welfare regulations, resulting in the deaths of two monkeys. PETA had reported one of the deaths to the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office, which is now investigating.

Inexcusable staff incompetence at the University of California–Davis’ California National Primate Research Center has caused the deaths of two more monkeys. Staff moved a caged monkey to an enclosure with more than a dozen younger monkeys, in the hope that the older monkey would lose weight through increased exercise. They then failed to alert a veterinarian to his severe weight loss until three months later, by which time the monkey’s organs had begun to shut down. He was then killed, according to a just-posted U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report.

Another monkey was killed when staff left her to roast inside a closed van with a heater blasting. She was found unresponsive and never regained consciousness. PETA urged the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office to investigate the apparent violation of California’s law against cruelty to animals, which includes provisions against leaving an animal in a hot vehicle. That office confirmed it’s investigating, and the USDA has finally issued a citation.

PETA is urging Congress to cut an additional $30 million earmarked for primate centers in the 2024 funding bill, because those facilities clearly don’t deserve another red cent of taxpayer money.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.