A question hangs over the world of health research as the Trump administration slashes government jobs and budgets, including federal funding that leads to the approval of new drugs and medical treatments.
What happens to the monkeys?
The use of primates for experiments in U.S. laboratories has soared over the past decade as scientists rely on them to test drug safety and study human maladies. They are the closest living relatives to humans. Demand has increased at a faster pace than monkeys can reproduce, leading to longer waits and higher costs for researchers.
Taxpayers have poured billions of dollars into breeding monkeys, importing them from foreign countries, keeping them healthy and transporting them to distant laboratories. South Carolina has played a major role. But the Trump administration has signaled that the go-go days of costly primate research are in peril amid threatened federal-funding cutbacks. The money may no longer be there for the monkey business the government helped build.
The prospect of shuttered labs at major federal research centers has ignited fears of mass euthanasia for primates that represent a huge government investment — both of time and money. Seven national primate centers that breed and house thousands of research monkeys are lobbying to salvage funding. A recent federal lawsuit says that a center in Seattle may have to “reduce or eliminate” 800 primates if the research cuts stand.
“The consequences would be terrible for the animals. That money goes to their upkeep, their breeding, their feeding, providing them with veterinary care. If the money disappears, you have to ask yourself, ‘What’s going to happen to those animals?’” said Dr. Paul Locke, a scientist and lawyer at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His toxicology policy lab studies alternatives to animal testing.
For years, the U.S. simply could not get enough monkeys to feed its insatiable research demands. South Carolina supplied monkeys for research into polio vaccines dating to 1949. The global hunt for a healthy supply spawned smuggling rings, illegal imports and an endless trail of domestic opportunists in search of quick profits.
Monkeys are pure gold. In the last five years, the average price of an endangered long-tailed macaque, used frequently for research, has quadrupled to as much as $24,000 per animal.
But in recent years, scientists have begun to rethink their use of primates in experiments that often sacrifice monkeys after painful tests. One behemoth federal health care system, the Veterans Administration, is under congressional orders to end its primate usage by next year. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, another prime user of monkey research, is encouraging scientists to use more humane and cost-effective alternatives.
South Carolina political leaders considered their embrace of the primate business — a noisy, disease-carrying, environmentally risky commodity that many locations did not want — as a contribution to the greater national good. The state’s monkeys aided in the search for cures for AIDS and COVID, and helped manage bioterror threats. Billy Keyserling, a former Beaufort mayor and state legislator, put it this way: “As much as people might not like using monkeys, it’s a necessity.”
The state of Natural Resources holds title to Morgan Island near Beaufort, home of the nation’s largest colony of free-ranging monkeys. As many as 4,000 primates live on what is colloquially known as Monkey Island. They are owned by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Staring spookily from the trees at passing boaters, the rhesus monkeys are valuable federal property of the agency headed for decades by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is a prime target of the political right. Fauci retired in 2023. When contacted by The Post and Courier, he referred questions to NIAID.
The passive arrangement has allowed the state to shift all regulatory responsibility for public health and safety to the federal government, which will determine the ”future of activities on Morgan Island,” said a spokesperson for Gov. Henry McMaster.
Federal money has poured into South Carolina for companies involved in breeding, care and research. The government has awarded Alpha Genesis, which runs a sprawling monkey farm in Yemassee and outpost in Early Branch. more than $113 million in contracts. In 2023, it won a contract worth $26.9 million to manage monkeys on Morgan Island.
And federal money is only a slice of the company’s commercial business of selling monkeys and their blood, serum and tissues to outside clients.
Alpha Genesis attracted unwanted attention in November when 43 monkeys owned by the National Institutes of Health bolted into the wild. Locals were warned to avoid contact with the animals, which can scratch or bite when confronted. It took months to round them up.
The escape and a subsequent mass monkey casualty drew attention to Alpha Genesis’s record of violations and tepid regulation by federal agencies charged with enforcing animal welfare protections. The agencies said months after the incidents that they would issue no fines or penalties.
Massachusetts-based Charles River Laboratories in 2023 pulled out of a contract to oversee Morgan Island. The company ended its work for strategic reasons, a spokesperson said. The decision, however, came soon after company officials announced they were cooperating in a Justice Department investigation of monkeys illegally imported from Cambodia. Charles River maintains a Microbial Solutions lab in Charleston that has no primates.
Head count, future funding unclear
An ever-changing roster of firms across the country import, breed and sell monkeys for research. It’s a turbulent industry with frequent mergers and acquisitions — and a dark past.
The regulation of primate companies is divided among a web of federal agencies, each now facing steep staffing cuts. Despite the flood of required paperwork and regular inspections of every operator licensed to breed or sell monkeys, no one has a comprehensive estimate of the total number of research monkeys in the U.S.
The only clarity comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which publishes an annual survey of primates held in labs and reserve. The latest number stood at 107,812.
That did not include thousands living in private sanctuaries, like the south Texas retreat run by Born Free USA. It also didn’t factor in retired research chimpanzees living in Louisiana or the retired gibbons at a private sanctuary in Summerville.
It also didn’t count monkeys running wild in the Florida tropics.
Tallies for Alpha Genesis monkeys only account for about 40 percent of those the company controls. Other primates memorialized in inspection reports are not counted in the annual surveys.
President Donald Trump’s moves have rattled the 27 divisions of the National Institutes of Health, which spends much of its $47 billion budget on outside research by about 300,000 scientists. It funds more than 60,000 proposals annually at more than 2,500 institutions.
South Carolina universities brought in $225.5 million in NIH research funding in the 2024 fiscal year.
Monkey research is here to stay, even if budgets are cut to the bone, proponents of biomedical research argue. An NIH study in 2018 described a primate shortage as a “serious threat to national security” because of their vital role in developing responses to emergencies like an anthrax attack or Ebola outbreak. Over the decades, monkeys were blasted with lethal doses of radiation to develop nuclear weapons and used by the Pentagon to study infectious diseases and exposure risks from deadly toxins.
“Every assessment that has been carried out in the recent years suggests that the nation would not have an adequate supply (of primates) to be able to meet demands that would be associated with any emergency that presents itself,” said Kenneth S. Ramos of Texas A&M, who chaired the expert study group assembled by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.
Monkey projects have long been targeted by critics of government waste. Two prominent Republican senators in 2010 mocked a federally funded study tracking monkeys high on cocaine. A decade later, the watchdog group White Coat Waste took credit for stopping a small project commissioned by the VA in Charleston to study whether overfed monkeys developed premature macular degeneration. The VA said the study by a private vendor was never funded.
In recent weeks, that group has joined U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace in a broader attack on what it sees as wasteful animal research. Mace, who hopes to end animal testing, used a boat trip to Monkey Island in 2020 to focus attention on Fauci’s use of federal funds for what she called “gruesome science experiments.”
Justin Goodman, White Coat Waste senior vice president, said a “come to Jesus” talk is needed about the future of monkeys in the U.S.
“If this new administration does the right thing, they’re going to take a hard look at places like Morgan Island. Anything Anthony Fauci touched is going to go under the microscope,” Goodman said. “But at the end of the day, I don’t know what the future looks like for the monkeys. They have nowhere to go.”
No monkey left behind
In Yemassee, Greg Westergaard stands ready if budget cuts imperil monkeys at any federally funded primate centers. He has vast undeveloped acreage in the scenic Lowcountry and a private revenue stream that would allow him to rescue monkeys put at risk by shrinking federal budgets.
Westergaard, CEO of Alpha Genesis, controls South Carolina’s primate stock. He estimates that it includes about 10,000 monkeys. While total monkey tallies are unclear, a Post and Courier analysis of USDA data shows that Alpha Genesis is among the six largest primate managers in the country, competing with major institutions like Charles River and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
“You’ll see ‘sanctuaries’ offering to take in monkey, if someone else foots the bill,” Westergaard said in an email. “But that is all (expletive), as they don’t have the facilities, staffing, or expertise to do so properly. And even if they did, the costs would be astronomical, as in many billions of dollars over a period of 30 or more years.”
How many monkeys would Alpha Genesis be willing to absorb?
“Potentially thousands,” he said.
Westergaard’s offer comes after a long period of unflattering global attention for his company, which the animal rights movement and company whistleblowers have held out as an example of regulatory negligence and animal neglect. The spectacle of research monkeys running loose in the woods, lured back by traps laced with fruit and peanut butter, became fodder for late-night talk shows and tabloid headlines.
But no regulatory hurdle stands in the way if Westergaard expands his monkey population. The company has steadily grown for years with no local opposition, even as its operations further stressed local services.
Alpha Genesis’ growth and challenges offer a rare look into the often secretive monkey industry. It is headquartered in Yemassee, a crossroads named after the Native American tribe that once roamed the land.
Alpha Genesis ranks as the area’s largest employer, with about 350 employees, Town Manager Matthew Garnes said. Low-skill jobs at the farm can pay far more and require shorter commutes than service positions at Hilton Head Island resorts, a major employment hub.
Garnes and Police Chief Gregory Alexander, who helped respond to the November monkey escape, met with Mace in Washington, D.C.
“We knew how devastating the loss of that business would be, not just for the town, but for the whole region,” Garnes said.
Creating a new image
Westergaard is a survivor in an industry that has weathered international scandals, Justice Department indictments and cutthroat battles with a movement that makes no secret about its desire to put him out of business.
He bought Alpha Genesis in 2003 after the previous owners, Laboratory Animals Breeding Services of Virginia, were charged in an import scandal.
LABs arranged to buy out a Jakarta vendor and imported about 1,300 crab-eating macaques through Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. U.S. Customs officials seized some shipments and found wild-caught monkeys. Those included nursing females and their babies, which should never have been shipped, court documents show.
Monkey imports are governed by federal laws and an international treaty to prevent wildlife exploitation. Charges were brought against three LABs officials, including David Taub, another former mayor of Beaufort. The government dropped the criminal charges against the LABs officials after a plea agreement, and the company paid a $500,000 fine.
Westergaard, then LABs’ research director, moved to buy out his former bosses. He knew a lot about its South Carolina operations, including its work on Morgan Island. LABs had established its breeding ground in 1979 after shipping in 1,400 rhesus monkeys from southern Puerto Rico as it battled a herpes B epidemic. Monkeys are carriers of herpes B, but there was little concern about bringing them to an isolated barrier island in the Saint Helena Sound.
Then Westergaard set out to rebuild the company’s image. He struck a deal with the Medical University of South Carolina to let a staff neurologist conduct his research in Yemassee. He offered school tours and created a toy line to calm anxious monkeys. He wanted to grow the farm to 4,000 monkeys — five times the Yemassee population at the time.
Alpha Genesis recorded dozens of transactions with the Fauci-led NIAID and other federal health institutes. It also sold monkeys for secretive tests in the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., made famous in the non-fiction bestseller “The Hot Zone” by Richard Preston about a thwarted Ebola outbreak. USAMRIID, with its maximum security labs, was developing defenses for lethal threats like Ebola, anthrax and ricin. Westergaard declined to discuss client relationships.
Pharmaceutical clients and university researchers used the Alpha Genesis laboratory, equipped to handle moderate risks. Teams from prestigious institutes like the Harvard Medical School flew in regularly. Work inside the lab was closely held, and employees tending to caged monkeys were bound by strict confidentiality.
For a long time, no one asked hard questions. Westergaard assured the public that the “low-level pathogens” handled at the lab made its work “impossible, basically, to cause any bad, crazy outbreak.” And yet reports were surfacing in scientific journals that raised questions about exactly what was happening inside the lab. One team was studying the Zika virus, which caused an epidemic in 2016 and has been linked to birth defects. The pathogen is considered “low level,” but it is spread by a mosquito indigenous to South Carolina. Experts said this left no room for lab sloppiness.
But the only on-site watchdog is an internal review committee, headed by the company’s sales director. Under federal law, the committee, known as an IACUC, had to approve all research and report to regulators any “adverse events.” To keep the committee from becoming a rubber stamp, it was supposed to include several independent members. Alpha Genesis, however, kept most details of its committee confidential, including the name of a community representative. A federal appellate court in December ruled that University of Washington erred by redacting the members of the committee in a public records request. Westergaard said the company does not release the names.
Troubles in the national primate industry helped Alpha Genesis win back a multimillion-dollar federal contract. Alpha Genesis in 2023 took over management of Monkey Island for NIAID from Charles River, which was among several companies dealing with fallout from the justice department import investigation.
Soon, Alpha Genesis faced its own troubles. The monkey escape and mass deaths late last year opened the door for aggrieved employees to allege deeper problems and regulatory negligence.
Other former employees watched from afar with growing concerns.
Susan Howell, a former Alpha Genesis researcher who served on its review committee, once worked with Westergaard to calm jittery monkeys who scattered when they sensed danger.
“No one wants to imagine animals being chased to the point of exhaustion for capture, testing, tattooing, or separation. No one wants a vaccine tested on tiny monkeys who then endure lasting psychological harm,” she said in an email from Costa Rica, where she was studying primates in the jungle.
No one is watching
Kathy Strickland was examining a monkey struggling to give birth. She was almost two years into her tenure as an Alpha Genesis veterinarian and was already demoralized. She routinely witnessed monkey injuries because of broken cages and said she dealt with unqualified staff and received little support.
Her team intubated the monkey and discovered internal damage from a C-section the previous year, according to an account she emailed to a colleague at the time. During surgery, the uterine wall ruptured. Strickland euthanized the primate on the operating table.
“I’m just feeling fed up with the inability to provide the minimum adequate care,” she said in the email to an Alpha Genesis consultant.
Strickland hoped that federal regulators would notice the poor animal care she documented. The USDA enforced the Animal Welfare Act, a law amended in 1985 to improve care for laboratory animals, and it was among the web of federal agencies involved in some aspects of monkey regulation. The NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare regulates animals used in federally funded research. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks imports. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enforces international treaties that protect endangered species.
But Strickland was disappointed when USDA inspectors came on site, as they do at least once a year.
“They were maybe in the clinic I was in for like 10 minutes, just like a quick walk through and then back out,” Strickland said.
Her reaction to the USDA’s review: “What the (expletive) was that?”
The USDA has about 120 inspectors for more than 16,000 licensed or registered facilities, which included at least 144 that hold and use monkeys for research. Inspections, even at large farms like Alpha Genesis, are usually completed in a day. Since the beginning of 2024, the USDA issued 29 critical animal welfare citations at monkey facilities. Penalties often lag behind citations, but since 2024 researchers were fined $98,600 for primate-related violations, according to a Post and Courier analysis.
Inspectors documented some gruesome violations. A baboon bled to death after it bit into its IV line at the University of Maryland-Baltimore. At Wake Forest University, staff mistakenly pumped oxygen into a monkey’s windpipe during a procedure, causing respiratory failure.
But reports at Alpha Genesis more commonly recorded no deficiencies or noted that problems were corrected, even before inspectors left.
Despite the cost of USDA regulation — $43 million was dedicated to animal welfare in the 2025 fiscal year — there are significant gaps in understanding the U.S. monkey inventory. Primate researchers do not regularly share information, so there’s no coordination, according to the 2023 report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. With better tracking, animals might be reused several times, cutting down on the number of monkeys needed. There are no uniform policies about how many experiments or how much pain an animal must endure before they are retired or euthanized.
Trump’s budget cuts could decimate the seven National Primate Research Centers, which hold about 26,000 monkeys. They were established by Congress in the early 1960s to increase monkey inventory and help NIH-funded primate researchers. The centers say they have helped find cures and treatments for every human condition from “A to Z,” or Alzheimer’s to Zika.
Trump’s decision to cut 15 percent of the costs of “indirect research” is now temporarily halted by a federal judge in Massachusetts hearing a lawsuit filed by 22 states. Every primate center has a negotiated rate with NIH that it adds atop its direct research grants to cover costs of buildings, equipment and depreciation.
Contract research organizations like Alpha Genesis, which sell services to government and private clients, have more flexibility. CROs now account for 56,000 of the nation’s monkeys. The 2023 expert panel recommended that CROs breed more monkeys, including the pricey long-tailed macaque.
U.S. researchers also rely on imported monkeys, a number which peaked in 2021 at 32,276 and now stands at about 17,000. China’s ban of monkey exports during COVID led to a global shift in monkey suppliers. Imports from Southeast Asia ballooned.
Trump has promised massive federal deregulation. It is unclear how that will impact agencies involved with primates.
During Trump’s first term, USDA regulation shifted dramatically, said V. Wensley Koch, a former agency official who is now an animal consultant.
“Up until he became president, the inspectors considered the animals to be our customers. Under Trump, the licensees were the customers, and you just didn’t do enforcement if you found something bad. You just let it stay bad because you didn’t want to make the licensee upset,” she said.
Under President Joe Biden, some former inspectors say, leaders of the animal inspection division had varying views on how tough inspectors should be and whether they should give advance notice of site visits.
At Alpha Genesis, the November escape and separate monkey deaths led to little more than slaps on the wrist. The company has been fined once by the USDA, for $12,500, in the years since Westergaard took over.
Kathy Strickland lost her job at Alpha Genesis in 2023 after a dispute with a manager. She left with haunting memories of mangled animals and what she described as avoidable deaths. She started seeing a therapist to try to move on.
Alpha Genesis served her with a cease-and-desist order. It accused her of leaking sensitive information. Westergaard said he could not comment.
“I do wish Dr. Strickland well in her future pursuits,” he wrote in an email to The Post and Courier.
Strickland now works to try to mend animals at a veterinary clinic near her home. She hopes to one day shed the memory of an over-sedated monkey stuffed into a shipping crate or the wounded monkey struggling to escape a wire fence.
She said she still hopes for accountability after her brief experience in the monkey world.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
