A federal citation was issued to Princeton University recently over the university’s the handling of monkeys in the institution’s animal research program. True New Jersey reports back in December Princeton reported the incident where two marmoset monkeys escaped from their cages. One was captured but the other attacked another marmoset where the brawl resulted in both monkeys sustaining injuries.

Though both monkeys recovered without any problems but the animal rights group Stop Animal Exploitation Now (SAEN) took it upon itself to take advantage of Princeton’s medical laboratory public disclosure in order to file a complaint with the USDA. The group urged the agency to conduct a formal investigation and Princeton was cited for failure to secure a primary enclosure in which SAEN urged the university be fined the maximum $10,000 to $20,000 per escaped monkey. As of this post, there is no indication how much Princeton will have to pay and it should be noted the USDA’s inspection did not find any additional violations at Princeton’s lab. SAEN also has credited itself with reporting similar citations at Johns Hopkins University and University of Pennsylvania.

This is one of many incidents where animal rights groups harass medical laboratories who use animals as part of their lab experiments. Other activists have taken it upon themsleves to harass and intimidate individual researchers. For example, one scientist out of Europe named Professor Nikos Logothetis was harassed and threatened so much by animal rights activists, he recently announced he would no longer use non-primates as part of his tests. I have yet to see any of these so-called animal rights activists offer themselves to take the drugs or subject themselves to the surgeries or other tests performed on the animals they claim to want to save. To borrow from the wisdom of Dr. Edwin Locke, the animal rights movement is about the animalistic treatment of humans and not about saving animal’s lives.