Help Keep Primates Out of American Labs Primates suffer terribly when they are captured and when they are confined during transport. Babies are separated from their mothers, crammed together in crates for weeks on end, and shipped from ports as far away as China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. They will spend the rest of their lives imprisoned in corporate labs—where they are often cruelly abused by lab workers—and subjected to excruciating and often lethal experiments in the name of product testing and "basic science." A recent PETA investigation of Covance—the largest importer of primates in the U.S.—uncovered abusive treatment and neglect of animals. In February, Covance was cited and fined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for serious violations of federal law. As horrific as animal-testing laboratories like Covance are for animals, they also pose a threat to public health. Covance has imported animals from Asia who were infected with the deadly Ebola virus. The importation of primates as pets has been banned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because of the dangers associated with importing these animals. The CDC knows that imported primates put public health in danger, as infectious diseases can easily jump the species barrier from monkeys to humans. Why, you may ask, would our country spend millions of tax dollars to otherwise stop bird flu and other deadly diseases from entering our borders yet let this threat develop right under our noses? Simply put, the profits of contract-testing giants like Covance are based on their access to cheap lab animals. As a result, they are doing everything that they can to stop our attempt to ban primate imports once and for all . And they don't care that in doing so, they might also create a potentially deadly loophole that could also affect humans' health. We desperately need your support today in order to help prevent both the suffering of primates who are imported for horrific tests and the potential for an epidemic that could impact all animals, including humans. Two Ways That You Can Help to Ban Animal Testing and Prevent a Potential Epidemic 1. Send an urgent message to the CDC! Tell them that you don't want deadly diseases to be imported into our country and spread into our own back yard—just so that corporate laboratories can make a profit! Send a letter to Dr. Julie Louise Gerberding, director of the CDC, urging her to enforce the same restrictions on animal importation for labs that already exist for pets—by banning the importation of nonhuman primates once and for all. 2. Support our work to end animal experiments by making a donation to PETA. . No animal anywhere should be maimed or killed in cruel and unnecessary experiments. That's why we're fighting to stop experiments on animals. And we've helped to persuade more than 550 companies to switch to more effective—and often, less expensive—non-animal alternatives.