By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

            An international animal rights organization has mailed 4,243 letters to Levy County residents living within a 10-mile radius of the proposed monkey lab property in Gulf Hammock warning of the dangers to human health if the facility is built.

            Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel, Ph.D., a former primate scientist who serves as senior scientific advisor on experimentation on primates for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), said residents should urge Gov. Ron DeSantis to stop this facility from being constructed.

            “You can keep this dangerous monkey business from infiltrating Levy County. Urge Gov. Ron DeSantis to use his authority to prevent JOINN from building this facility,” Jones-Engel said.

            JOINN Biologics, located in the San Francisco area, and its parent company, JOINN Laboratories in China, have purchased 1,400 acres in Gulf Hammock for a monkey quarantine facility to screen out monkeys that may be sick before selling them to medical research facilities. The Levy County facility might be used for breeding the monkeys.

            According to JOINN’s website, the company operates JOINN Laboratories (China), JOINN Medsafe Co. LTD, JOINN Clinical (Beijing) Co., Ltd, JOINN Biologics (Beijing) Co., Ltd, JOINN Medical Testing Laboratories (Beijing) Co. Ltd, JOINN Laboratories (Suzhou) and JOINN laboratories in California and Massachusetts as well as company facilities at other sites in China and the U.S.

            Beijing is the capital of China.

            Jones-Engel said JOINN Biologics is currently the largest nonclinical contract laboratory in China and the United States. She said it conducts painful and deadly experiments on animals in China and here in the U.S. She said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has warned that imported monkeys pose a significant risk to public health.

            “Bacteria and viruses that the monkeys are exposed to in Asia can spread to humans and other animals here. Monkeys involved in the wildlife trade for experimentation are known to carry and transmit a slew of nasty pathogens and diseases including Herpes B virus, tuberculosis, antimicrobial resistant microbes, E-bola-like viruses, simian hemorrhagic fever virus, shigellosis, salmonella, campylobacter, malaria, leprosy,” she said. “In addition, new, unidentified viruses that have the potential to cause pandemics are at risk.”

            Jones-Engel said JOINN is proposing to warehouse thousands of imported monkeys on agricultural and environmentally sensitive land in Gulf Hammock. The animals will generate an enormous amount of biological waste. Monkey urine, feces, saliva, blood, and other bodily fluids will be introduced into the environment along with any infectious agents present in those bodily fluids.

            She said the waste generated by this facility will attract insects, birds, and other wildlife that will be drawn to the smell of food and the presence of monkeys, and Florida has numerous insects capable of increasing transmission of parasites, viruses, and bacteria including a healthy mosquito population during the warm months.

            Jones-Engel said the monkeys also may escape from captivity at the proposed Gulf Hammock facility and run into the Levy County community.

            She said long-tailed macaque monkeys are often used for medical research. The number of long-tailed macaques is plummeting in Southeast Asia and have been upgraded to endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

            “Greedy laboratories and the companies that prop them up, including JOINN, were cited as a primary threat to these monkeys,” she said.

            Primates shipped to facilities such as the one JOINN hopes to establish in Gulf Hammock are torn away from their homes in nature or else confined on squalid breeding farms in Asia and Africa.

            “When these monkeys are shipped to the U.S., they’re separated from their families, locked inside small wooden crates, and crammed into dark, terrifying cargo holds for as long as 30 hours,” she said.

            “Eventually, if they pass the quarantine at facilities like the one JOINN is proposing, they’re trucked to laboratories that will poison them, cut them up and kill them,” she said.

Urge Gov. Ron DeSantis to use his authority to prevent JOINN from building this facility:

Contact info for Gov. Ron DeSantis:

Email the Governor at GovernorRon.Desantis@eog.myflorida.com

850-488-7146

Public Information Regarding Sale of Land for Monkey Lab

As a matter of public information for our Spotlight readers, L &T Cattle & Timber, LLC., a Crystal River, Florida company, sold the 1,400-acre monkey lab property in Gulf Hammock to JOINN Laboratories, CA Inc., a California company. The two managers of L&T Cattle and Timber, Steven D. Lamb and Justin Lamb sold the property for $5.5 million. Dusty Calderon of Saunders, Ralston, & Danzler Real Estate in Lakeland brokered the deal. The special warranty deed was recorded on Aug. 4, 2022, in Levy County Circuit Court.

The phone number for the real estate company is 407-459-7564; Email: info@svnsaunders.com

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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt October 28, 2022; Posted October 28, 2022