The board of Charles River Laboratories, an American pharmaceutical company that also supplies monkeys for research, has unanimously recommended against a proposal that would require transparency on the company’s lab monkey import practices.
Animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who bought Charles River shares to get a seat at the table and be allowed to submit shareholder resolutions, put forward the proposal.
Charles River shareholders will vote on PETA’s proposal at the company’s annual meeting on May 9.
The proposal calls for Charles River to list the types of monkeys and their country of origin when it imports animals into the United States for use in research. Additionally, PETA’s proposal requests information on whether the monkeys are caught in the wild or bred in captivity.
Charles River is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice and the US Fish and Wildlife Service regarding the smuggling of monkeys from Cambodia.
The case involving Charles River will run parallel to a broader industry-wide investigation by US regulatory authorities into the supply of animals from Cambodia, which some analysts estimate accounts for over 60% of the total of animals imported into the US for use in research.
