Primate Products Inc. Facility Closes Down after Smash HLS Campaign

Gary Serig­nese, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of South Flori­da Smash HLS, leads a demon­stra­tion out­side Pri­mate Prod­ucts, Inc

Gary Serig­nese, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of South Flori­da Smash HLS, leads a demon­stra­tion out­side Pri­mate Prod­ucts, Inc. in Doral, near Mia­mi Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. (CRISTOBAL HERRERA / Sun Sen­tinel SoFlaShare / Sep­tem­ber 22, 2011)

A South Flori­da hold­ing cen­ter for import­ed research mon­keys [sic] that had been the tar­get of ani­mal rights protests has shut down, with the com­pa­ny mov­ing its oper­a­tions to a remote loca­tion north of the Ever­glades.

Pri­mate Prod­ucts Inc. has closed a fenced, cage-filled build­ing near Mia­mi Inter­na­tion­al Air­port that had been the focus of an ani­mal rights cam­paign involv­ing pick­et­ing, demon­stra­tions against par­tic­i­pat­ing air­lines and smug­gled pho­tos of bloody mon­keys. The com­pa­ny has laid off 10 employ­ees and moved its remain­ing oper­a­tions to a com­plex near the Col­lier Coun­ty town of Immokalee.

 

Dr. Thomas Row­ell, a vet­eri­nar­i­an who is the company’s pres­i­dent, said the clo­sure rep­re­sent­ed a long-planned con­sol­i­da­tion that had noth­ing to do with the demon­stra­tions. He said Pri­mate Prod­ucts had obtained fed­er­al per­mis­sion to quar­an­tine mon­keys at its oth­er facil­i­ty and planned to reduce its import and sales busi­ness in favor of ser­vice and sup­port.

Gary Serig­nese, of Boca Raton, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the ani­mal rights group South Flori­da Smash HLS, said he doubt­ed this expla­na­tion.

“We know that they would not have made this change with­out our aggres­sive protest cam­paign,” he said. “An import com­pa­ny would not aban­don a facil­i­ty close to the inter­na­tion­al air­port unless it felt it had no choice.”

Dur­ing the cam­paign, activists held demon­stra­tions at the Pem­broke Pines home of the company’s pre­vi­ous pres­i­dent. Using email, phone calls and pick­et­ing, they pres­sured local freight air­lines into refus­ing to car­ry pri­mates. They obtained pho­tos of injured mon­keys from inside the facil­i­ty and pro­vid­ed them to the news media.

In argu­ing for the com­pa­ny to close, they said the mon­keys were head­ed for lives of bore­dom, pain and fear, with dubi­ous ben­e­fit to human health. Pri­mate Prod­ucts has said its work pro­vides essen­tial research sub­jects to sci­en­tists, who are the best judges of their bio­med­ical val­ue.

“We are here to assure you and oth­ers that PPI is com­mit­ted to our mis­sion to serve the bio­med­ical research com­mu­ni­ty and to pro­vide prod­ucts and ser­vices specif­i­cal­ly designed to enhance the con­ser­va­tion, care, and use of non­hu­man pri­mates for advanc­ing pub­lic health,” Row­ell wrote in an email.