U.S. Agency’s Monkey Business a Boon to Chinese Vaccine Research

Watchdog suing for docs on improper primate investigation and failed prosecution

Should another pandemic of the severity of COVID-19 occur, would you sooner trust cures and vaccines researched and developed in the in the U.S., or in communist China?

Speaking of no-brainers, let’s talk about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). That subset of the Department of the Interior (DOI) launched its own disastrous five-year investigation into the sourcing of monkeys from Cambodia for use in U.S. medical research. It did so without the knowledge of the Cambodian government and without coordination with other agencies. As a result, the supply of nonhuman primates (NHPs) needed for U.S. medical research has tightened severely, offering China the ability to surpass America in vaccine and medicine development.

PETA and other radical animal rights organizations have long wanted to ban the U.S. import of longtail macaques for research and have targeted FWS specifically. The species is not endangered, but the trade is highly regulated and, with few exceptions, NHPs are supposed to be bred in captivity. One animal rights organization introduced the Service to a Chinese national working in a primate facility in Cambodia, who – for a price – would inform on NHP suppliers who were shipping wild macaques. The price was $225,000, relocation for him and his family to the U.S., and help finding work once here. For that, the informant stole a visitor log, installed spyware on a computer and monitored the comings and goings at the facility’s entrance, and performed other possibly illegal acts.

What did FWS get out of it? Other than plaudits from PETA and other fringe groups, not much. A single prosecution of a minor Cambodian forestry official who was quickly acquitted of all charges. The Operation Long Tail Liberation is still ongoing, while the Service is denying Cambodian import permits to U.S. firms and hampering efforts to grow NHP breeding programs in the U.S. Meanwhile U.S. firms are understandably skittish about any involvement in the programs.

Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) submitted Freedom of Information Act requests for documents pertaining to the ill-fated “Operation Long Tail Liberation” to the Department of Justice (DOJ), which prosecuted the case and has coordinated with FWS. DOJ has stonewalled documents, claiming, incredibly, that communications to and from a particular named attorney constituted asking for records “on” that individual. This is the same sort of absurd assertion the FBI, another DOJ component, unsuccessfully attempted to employ to deny PPT records in an earlier case. (After PPT filed suit in that case, the FBI eventually relented and informed the watchdog that it would begin producing documents.) PPT has filed a suit against DOJ to force them to disgorge the requested records on Operation Long Tail Liberation. We are not the only ones interested in the topic. The House Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing investigating the operation on Sept. 10.

In the meantime, China’s research using NHPs continues uninterrupted.

“In the aftermath of COVID-19, it’s hard to imagine a U.S. government agency handing our medical research capabilities directly to China,” said PPT Director Michael Chamberlain. “But maybe the average person’s imagination just isn’t active enough to conceive of the lengths some bureaucrats will extend themselves to please special interests. The feds, encouraged and even enabled by animal rights radicals, launched a ridiculous, legally dubious cloak and dagger operation on foreign soil using a paid informant. The taxpayers have nothing to show for it, and now they are stonewalling legitimate FOIA requests. As if public trust in government weren’t low enough.”

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