“Charles River may attract the same scrutiny from Canadian officials, who also have a national obligation to uphold the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), as it did from the U.S. “James Foster seems to want shareholders to believe he cares about the abduction of monkeys from their forest homes, but if he’s importing them from Cambodia to Canada, he’s playing with fire,” says PETA primate scientist Dr. Yet in an apparent work-around, millions of dollars’ worth of monkeys-hundreds of the animals-from Cambodia were flown to Canada in May, according to a government trade database, and Charles River was the likely importer. Fish & Wildlife Service suspended imports of the long-tailed macaques from Cambodia to the U.S.

Department of Justice of Cambodian officials and nationals who allegedly formed a “monkey smuggling ring” and passed off wild-caught macaques as captive-bred. This follows the November 2022 indictment by the U.S. The company announced to shareholders in February that it was under federal criminal and civil investigation for possible illegalities in its importation of long-tailed macaques from Cambodia and would stop exporting monkeys from that country until it could prove the animals weren’t captured in their forest homes. PETA, which owns stock in the company, sent a letter today to Charles River CEO James Foster calling on him to confirm and explain this reversal in policy. – Charles River Laboratories has apparently resumed purchasing monkeys from Cambodia-despite telling shareholders that it had stopped.

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