At the same time that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was backing out its argument against protecting the most exploited primates on the planet, the industry pressuring it to do so was pushing forward with plans to import, imprison, and sell thousands more of these beleaguered beings. 

As Rise for Animals’ news roundups have tracked, a group of animal research industry executives wants to build the country’s largest nonhuman primate breeding “warehouse” in Georgia.

Seeking to cash in on the animal research industry’s endangerment of whole primate species,  “a new company” (incorporated in February 2023) called “Safer Human Medicine” is raring to build a “200-acre animal husbandry facility” intended to “house 30,000 monkeys [who] will be raised and shipped out for research.” More specifically, Safer Human Medicine wants to act as a “pass-through facility”, importing nonhuman primates from Asia and Mauritius, before breeding and selling them for torture and killing in U.S. laboratories. 

And, it’s queued up to benefit directly from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s recent failing: 

Safer Human Medicine explicitly plans to exploit endangered but unprotected long-tailed macaques:

[Safer Human Medicine] will import endangered long-tailed macaques and perhaps other species of primates from various locations . . . which will then be shipped from [Safer Human Medicine] to other locations for experimentation.

Safer Human Medicine . . . says the long-tailed macaques will be bred and sold to pharmaceutical companies, universities and laboratories for medical research.

To bring its nefarious plans to bear, Safer Human Medicine has colluded with government officials (sound familiar?) to ram their wants through. 

Despite not existing “anywhere but on paper” and being “run out of a private residential property in Massachusetts”, Safer Human Medicine used a “slick” pitch that was “thick on glossy images and hyperbole” – yet, true to form for the industry it represents, “very, very thin on data and reality” – to incentivize Bainbridge, Georgia, officials to prioritize financial profit above all us.

They did this so successfully, in fact, that — behind closed doors, subject to non-disclosure agreements, and in asserted violation of law — Safer Human Medicine got local officials to: 

• agree to issue bonds worth  $300,000,000 to help finance the project; 
• “promise[] to sell” Safer Humane Medicine “approximately 200 acres of land” valued at $2,000,000 for $10.00, and “agree[] to pay [Safer Human Medicine]’s broker an additional $120,000 brokerage fee; 
• stipulate that the property would remain “titled to the Industrial Authority and leased back to [Safer Human Medicine] pursuant to a rental agreement . . . so that [Safer Human Medicine] could avoid paying some or all of its ad valorem taxes; and
• give Safer Human Medicine $58,602,988.56 in tax abatements. 

These happenings spurred a lawsuit by local residents, who seek to stop Safer Human Medicine from setting up shop in Bainbridge; though, while this lawsuit pends, Safer Human Medicine’s executives remain entirely undaunted by even the express wants and interests of many of the very humans they (ridiculously but repeatedly) claim to be committed to helping and plan to continue pushing their project forward… 

… because that’s what they’ve done their entire careers. Safer Human Medicine is run by three animal research industry careerists, who are “deep into the industry” and connected to the two “biggest players in the monkey importation business”.  

Safer Human Medicine’s leadership is composed of “executives from other animal research/breeding companies that have been cited previously for numerous violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act [], the Clean Water Act, and other federal laws” and who “have an established pattern of disregarding laws and engaging in unethical practices….” 

They are:

➔ David Johst, President of Safer Human Medicine

Johst spent 29 years at Charles River Laboratories, where he worked as Corporate Counsel, Vice President of Human Resources and Administration (Chief Administrative Officer), Senior Vice President, and Corporate Executive Vice President. At the time of his retirement in 2020, Johst was receiving a “base salary” of $682,745, was eligible for a “bonus” and a “$100,000 stock award”, and was provided full, company-paid benefits extending past his retirement (on account of offering “consulting services”). Johst’s net worth is estimated to be “at least $41 Million dollars” based on his ownership of “212,854 shares of Charles River Laboratories Inc (CRL) stock”. (Importantly for someone like Johst who owns a tremendous amount of Charles River stock, Charles River previously projected that “constraints on the supply of monkeys [would] reduce its consolidated revenue growth forecast by about 200 to 400 basis points” in 2023…)

Not long after Johst left Charles River, the company (i) “received a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice” that related “to an ongoing criminal investigation . . . into the supply chain and trafficking of [nonhuman primates] into the U.S. for research”, and (ii) was subject to a shareholder lawsuit, alleging that “certain of the company’s senior executives made a series of materially false and/or misleading statements about the company’s procurement of non-human primates (‘NHPS’), and in particular, long-tailed macaques, from inherently suspicious suppliers” (the identified period of these acts overlapped with the end of Johst’s tenure at Charles River).

➔ Jim Harkness, Chief Executive Officer of Safer Human Medicine

Harkness spent 18 years at Covance (in various roles, including Vice President of Global Project and Data Management and Vice President of Early Development Global Operations and GM Research Products) and over three years as Chief Operating Officer at Envigo, “a private company that procured, bred, and sold animals, including beagles and monkeys, for experimentation.” In fact, Harkness was the Chief Operating Officer (in the company’s own words, responsible for “the logistics, production, and procurement of our models, in addition to regulatory compliance”) of Envigo at the time that its “beagle-breeding facility was raided by the U.S. Department of Justice” and 4,000 beagles were rescued. During this same period, Harkness “tried to sell off the beagles” before being stopped by the Department of Justice and lobbied “against an animal welfare bill put forward by the Virginia state legislature in response to the facility’s violations….”

Under Mr. Harkness’ leadership, Envigo exhibited a disregard for animal welfare and sanitation. Inspectors from the [USDA] found numerous violations of the federal [Animal Welfare Act], including ‘live insects, worms, maggots, beetles, flies, ants, mold, and feces,’ in the dogs’ food and said that 300 puppies had died in the span of seven months from ‘unknown causes.’ . . . The Department of Justice found thousands of dogs in acute distress and seized nearly 4,000 beagles from Envigo . . . Envigo also failed to undertake any steps to monitor and test for diseases, and regularly failed to ‘prevent, control, diagnose, and treat diseases and injuries,’ in the animals under Envigo’s care and as required by law.

Coming full circle, executives at Envigo’s parent company (Inotiv) “were charged with violations of U.S. endangered species law for illegally importing non-human primates.”

➔ Kurt Derfler, Chief Operating Office of Safer Human Medicine

Derfler, like Harkness, spent at least 15 years at Covance (in various roles, including Executive Director of Operations), which was “acquired by Envigo” and at the heart of the alleged conspiracy to illegally import and market endangered long-tailed macaques.” Following Covance, Derfler spent almost two years as Vice President of North American Operations at Envigo and more than two years as Executive Director of [Nonhuman Primate] Operations at Charles River Laboratories – in fact, Derfler left Charles River Laboratories “just months after the Justice Department subpoenaed it as part of its investigation of possible wild monkey smuggling from Cambodia.”

(It is also important to recognize that all of the animal research entities at which Safer Human Medicine’s executives have been employed are interconnected, as well. For example, Charles River has received thousands of long-tailed macaques “from two monkey-import facilities . . . owned by Inotiv [the parent company of Envigo]….”)

Unable to assuage community concerns — about either the planned facility, its dealings with local officials, or its executives’ identities — Safer Human Medicine has brought out the animal research industry’s mainstay: lies.

Despite the evidence of Johst’s, Harkness’s, and Derfler’s involvement in both legal and illegal animal exploitation, Safer Human Medicine claims that its leadership has “dedicated their careers to responsibly managing and caring for animals in medical research” and has “always been committed to operating responsibly and ethically….”

This is who and what the inspiring residents of Bainbridge, Georgia, are fighting — and, really, who and what all of us opposed to animal experimentation are fighting.

Join the fight by signing on to our petition and, then, spreading the word!

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