For immediate release:
January 27, 2022
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
San Antonio – Starting this weekend, San Antonio residents will be faced with images of a baby monkey traumatized by being torn from its mother to be tortured by experimenters. Colombian street artist Praxis partnered with PETA to embellish the city with thought provoking Street art ordered the Southwest National Primate Research Center (SNPRC) at the Texas Institute of Biomedical Research — and six other federally funded national primate research centers around the country — to close.
PETA Vice President, Dr Alka Chandna, said: “Texas Biomed Primate Center has cost taxpayers billions of dollars to make monkeys miserable and repeatedly violates animal protection laws. “. “PETA wants Texas Biomed to shut down its failed lab and send the monkeys to reputable sanctuaries where they can live out the rest of their lives in peace.”
During the last decade, The US Department of Agriculture fined Texas Biomed nearly $26,000 for repeatedly allowing primates to escape from cages and injure themselves and others, including humans.. Last year, 159 baboons suffered frostbite to the point that their fingers, toes or tails were amputated because the SNPRC could not protect them during a winter storm.
After San Antonio residents vehemently opposed awarding $11 million to Texas Biomed in its 2022 bond program, it withdrew the proposal from consideration. But on Wednesday, the city defied public wishes and added $10 million to Texas Biomed as part of the American Rescue Plan Act — federal money set aside to help the city during the COVID crisis -19.
Locations for this artwork include areas around downtown, Texas Biomed’s campus, and private club The Argyle.
PETA — in part, their motto that “animals are not our experiments” — advocates speciesism, a human worldview – supremacy. For more information on PETA news collection and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebookor Instagram.
