Buckets of ‘Dead Monkeys’ to Greet UW Grads

Jan 07, 2024

For Immediate Release:June 8, 2023

Contact:Amanda Hays 202-483-7382

Seattle – Four giant buckets filled with the bodies of "dead monkeys," along with PETA supporters and activists from the Northwest Animal Rights Network, will greet University of Washington (UW) graduates and their families as they make their way to Husky Stadium for commencement ceremonies on Saturday. The activists will be eager to discuss how the school's primate center experiments on and kills monkeys now listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

When: Saturday, June 10, 12:30 p.m.

Where: University of Washington, Husky Stadium (northeast entrance), 3800 Montlake Blvd. N.E., Seattle

Monkeys already pushed to the brink of extinction die from disease, injury, or neglect—and that's before they’re even used in any experiments—at the Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC), which is run by UW. The center has violated federal animal welfare laws and regulations dozens of times, including when a monkey strangled to death, and run afoul of state public health laws. Veterinary errors there have caused monkey deaths, and dangerous diseases transmissible to humans infect endangered monkeys at the center's Arizona breeding facility. And UW was forced to pay more than $540,000 in fees, penalties, and interest for trying to keep public records about the disasters inside the WaNPRC's walls hidden.

"UW's graduates will head out into the world carrying the stain that their university hosts a primate center that mutilates and kills endangered monkeys," says PETA Senior Science Advisor Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. "PETA is calling on UW to close the primate center, release the surviving victims to reputable sanctuaries, and go full-speed ahead with superior, animal-free research methods."

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 Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.