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Judge rules Alamogordo lab cannot keep research chimps

Federally funded chimps at the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana will retire to either a lab in Texas or a chimp sanctuary in Louisiana.
Courtesy of the Humane Society of the United States
Federally funded chimps at the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana will retire to either a lab in Texas or a chimp sanctuary in Louisiana.

A federal judge has ruled that chimpanzees previously used for research in a New Mexico laboratory can be transferred to an animal sanctuary. A U.S. District Court judge in Maryland found this week the National Institutes of Health legally cannot refuse to send chimpanzees in the Alamogordo Primate Facility to a sanctuary. It would violate the Chimpanzee Health, Improvement, Maintenance and Protection Act. The law was established in 2000 to fund a federal chimpanzee sanctuary system. The order is in response to a lawsuit brought by the Humane Society of the United States last year. According to the federal agency, 30 chimps remain in Alamogordo because of medical conditions and social attachments.