Each year hundreds of monkeys are transported into and out of Florida as part of the pet trade, for entertainment and display, and for the research industry. In response to a public records request, ARFF recently received copies of certificates of veterinary inspection filed with the State of Florida detailing 91 separate shipments in 2019 and 2020. The certificates, completed and signed by a veterinarian who states that the animal(s) is sufficiently healthy for shipment, are required when monkeys and many other animals cross the state line. Below are some excerpts from the records that ARFF received.
Zoos and traveling animal acts.
- It is common for nonhuman primates and other animals to be traded between zoos, as if they were baseball cards. For example, in late 2019 two mandrills were flown from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and one white-cheeked gibbon was moved from Zoo Miami to the Dallas Zoo.
- In April 2019, two smaller zoos– Brights Zoo in Tennessee and Southwick’s Zoo in Massachusetts– sold six squirrel monkeys, one DeBrazza’s monkey and one patas monkey to Animals in Motion, a company in Citra, Florida that provides animals for film and television.
- Two men (Phillip Dolci and Tim Lepard) who tour with “banana derby” or “cowboy monkey” acts, in which capuchin monkeys are strapped onto the backs of dogs who then run around at high speeds, filed health certificates when they entered Florida in late 2019 to bring their cruel shows to rodeos and county fairs.
Pet trade.
In 2019 and 2020 dozens of marmosets, capuchin monkeys, squirrel monkeys and tamarins crossed the state line as part of the pet trade.
- Florida’s largest breeder of monkeys for the pet trade is likely Jim Hammonds (dba Monkey Whisperer). For over a decade, he has sold baby marmosets out of his home in Parrish (Manatee County). He charges $3,800 for a six week old baby marmoset (In their natural habitat, marmosets remain close to adult caregivers until at least three months of age). So far in 2020, Hammonds has shipped at least 17 marmosets to people across the country, from Texas to North Dakota to Maryland.
- In October 2019, a breeder called the Smoky Mountain Zoo (Pigeon Forge, Tennessee) sent three marmosets to be sold to the highest bidder at the Gulf Coast Livestock Auction in Madison, Florida.
Vivisection.
The largest number of monkeys crossed the Florida state line in 2019 and 2020 as part of the research industry. Florida is home to half a dozen companies that sell monkeys to laboratories for use in research and testing.
- In 2019-20, DSP Research Services, a laboratory animal supplier in Homestead, Florida, arranged shipments of monkeys from the Orient BioResource Center in Alice, Texas to the University of Rochester and to the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (Columbus, OH).
- In May 2020, a laboratory animal supplier in Hendry County called BC US shipped 20 long-tailed macaques to a Charles River animal testing facility in Stillwell, Kansas. A few weeks earlier, BC US shipped 44 monkeys to a Charles River facility in Reno, Nevada.
- In 2019-20, according to the records that ARFF received, the Mannheimer Foundation (facilities in Homestead and LaBelle) shipped a total of 38 hamadryas baboons, rhesus macaques and long-tailed macaques to research institutions, such as the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Bastrop, Texas and the Magee-Womens Research Institute in Pittsburgh.
- In 2019, two shipments with a total of 285 long-tailed macaques arrived at Worldwide Primates, a Miami-based laboratory animal supplier with a horrible history, after a long cross-country trip by truck from Altasciences in Everett, Washington. (We’ve written about Worldwide Primates before on this blog.)
- In 2019-20, PreLabs, a laboratory animal supplier that has a quarantine/breeding facility in LaBelle, sold hundreds of rhesus macaques, long-tailed macaques and African green monkeys for use in experimentation. The research laboratory at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the contract research organization BIOQUAL (Rockville, MD) were major customers.