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They Feel What We Feel:30,000 Monkeysand the Conscience of a Nation

Cordova 2028 ·

We are guardians of this world, not its owners.

By Vincent Cordova · Cordova 2028: Moving Forward Together

Poster: They Feel What We Feel: 30,000 Monkeys and the Conscience of a Nation. A mother long-tailed macaque holds her baby beside a torn note reading “We Hear You, Akshaya,” as a young woman looks toward a barbed-wire fence around a proposed monkey breeding facility in Bainbridge, Georgia, with a sign listing mass breeding for experiments, 30,000 monkeys, an endangered species, $58M+ in tax breaks, and a more humane, science-based future
Campaign design team

We Hear You,
Akshaya

A young woman named Akshaya went on TikTok and said she had nowhere else to turn. She was asking for help for 30,000 monkeys who cannot ask for themselves.

Akshaya, thank you. Your post reached us. We stand with you. You are not alone, and you never were.

She should not have had to be the one to sound the alarm. That is the job of leadership. When leaders stay silent, ordinary people carry the weight. So let me say it plainly: what is being planned in Bainbridge, Georgia is wrong, and my administration will not accept it.

What Is Being Built

A company called Safer Human Medicine plans a $396 million complex in Bainbridge, Georgia. At full size it would hold up to 30,000 long-tailed macaques, bred to be sold to universities and drug companies for experiments. (Fox 5 Atlanta)

Bainbridge has about 14,000 people. The monkeys would outnumber the town two to one. (The Guardian)

Proposed
Monkey
Breeding Facility

Bainbridge, Georgia

Monkeys30,000
People of Bainbridge~14,000

  • $396M

    Proposed complex in Bainbridge, Georgia

  • 30,000

    Long-tailed macaques at full size

  • 3×

    At least triple any U.S. primate breeding facility

  • ↓ ~80%

    Macaque population decline in 35 years

  • $58M+

    In local tax breaks approved

Here is what else the record shows:

  • The scale. It would be at least triple the size of any primate breeding facility in America. The first 500 to 1,000 monkeys would be imported from "several Asian countries." (Animal Welfare Institute)

  • The species. Long-tailed macaques were listed as endangered in 2022. Their population has fallen about 80% in 35 years, driven largely by demand from the research industry. (World Animal News)

  • The leadership. The CEO was previously chief operating officer of Envigo. Envigo ran the Virginia beagle facility shut down after a federal investigation, and was convicted under the Animal Welfare Act with a record fine. The president and COO come from Charles River Laboratories, which disclosed a federal investigation into its monkey shipments from Cambodia. (World Animal News, AWI)

  • The deal. Local agencies approved tax breaks worth at least $58 million. Residents sued, saying the approvals violated Georgia's Open Meetings Act. A second group filed a public nuisance suit. (PETA)

  • The expansion. The company has since bought a second site in LaBelle, Florida. (World Animal News)

The people of Bainbridge did not ask for this. When the county development authority took back its vote, the company sued to hold the town to the deal anyway. (WAMC/NPR)

This Is a Question of Conscience

We did not create these animals. A higher power did. They were here long before any company, any patent, or any quarterly earnings call. No one has the right to turn them into inventory.

They feel what we feel.

A macaque knows fear. She knows pain. She knows her child. She grieves.

You do not need a study to know that. You need only look into her eyes. Every one of us already knows, in our conscience, that breeding living beings by the tens of thousands to be sickened and killed is wrong.

We are guardians of this world, not its owners.

Guardianship means we protect what cannot protect itself. A nation that can look at 30,000 monkeys in a warehouse and see only a supply chain has lost something. This is our chance to get it back.

Their Arguments, Answered

Their claim

“It’s only breeding, not research.”

The company says the site is strictly husbandry, with toys and enrichment. (The Independent)

The answer

A facility that exists only to supply labs is part of the lab. The suffering is just shipped to another address.

Their claim

“Medicine depends on it.”

They warn that without these primates, research stops. (Fox 5 Atlanta)

The answer

But more than 90% of drugs tested on animals fail in human trials. (Humane Society, via Tifton Gazette) Human cell models and organs-on-chips are built on human biology. (Species Unite) The future of medicine is human-relevant science. We should be funding it, not building monkey warehouses.

Their claim

“It brings jobs.”

The company promises up to 263 jobs. (Fox 5 Atlanta)

The answer

Bainbridge deserves good jobs. It does not deserve to be told that the only way to get them is to accept what its own residents are fighting in court. That is not a choice. That is extraction wearing a hard hat.

Their claim

“It’s safer than imports.”

The company says domestic breeding avoids poaching and smuggling. (WAMC/NPR)

The answer

Yet it plans to import from Asia to start. And its leaders come from the very companies tied to the Cambodia smuggling investigation. The answer to a broken pipeline is not a bigger one.

What My Administration Will Do

Words are not enough. Here is what a Cordova administration will do, starting on day one.

  1. 1

    No public money for primate mega-facilities.

    No federal grant, contract, loan guarantee, or tax-advantaged financing will support any facility built to breed primates at industrial scale. Public dollars will not build private cages.

  2. 2

    Close the import door.

    Federal agencies will suspend new import permits for long-tailed macaques, an endangered species. Every primate already in the supply chain must be traced from birth, with records open to public audit. Smuggling will be prosecuted, and the buyers along with the sellers.

  3. 3

    No license for repeat offenders.

    Any executive who led a company convicted under the Animal Welfare Act will be barred from holding a federal animal dealer or research license. No new company name, no shell, no transfer to a relative will get around it.

  4. 4

    Fund the replacement.

    We will move federal research dollars toward human-relevant science: human cell and tissue models, organs-on-chips, and computer modeling. We will set a public timeline to phase out primate testing, with researchers and workers supported through the transition.

  5. 5

    Local consent means something.

    No community should have a project like this approved behind closed doors. Federal support for any animal facility will require open public meetings, full disclosure, and real local consent.

These commitments will be written into law as the Primate Protection and Human-Relevant Science Act. It will sit alongside our earlier work on animal welfare, because the principle is the same: the strong exist to protect the vulnerable, not to profit from them.

Stand With Her

Akshaya did her part. Now we do ours.

  • Share her post. Share this one. Let Bainbridge know the country is watching.
  • If you live in Georgia, call your county and state officials and tell them where you stand.
  • Support the Bainbridge residents fighting this in court. They have been at it for nearly three years.
  • Ask every candidate for every office one question: will you let this happen?

This has to stop.

It will stop.

Not because a study told us to, but because we already know.

I am a piece of the collective essence of this world that never gives up and needs every other piece to be whole.

— Vinnie Cordova

Cordova 2028: Moving Forward Together

cordova2028.com · info@cordova2028.com

Sources

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Vincent Cordova · Candidate for U.S. President 2028

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