Priscilla Feral from Friends of Animals
Speaks to the Abolitionist about PETA’s bid to shut down the
US private sanctuary, Primarily Primates

By Claudette Vaughan (11/11/2006)

Abolitionist: For people reading this who don’t know the full story can you provide us with an over-view of what’s going on with the private sanctuary, Primarily Primates and PETA’s bid to get it closed down?

Priscilla Feral: PETA had sued Primarily Primates in the names of non-human primates. Interestingly enough with the goal of returning some chimpanzees, especially the one’s from Ohio State University (OSU) to institutions that use animals. In other words they wanted to take the chimpanzees that were actually going to be provided the solitude of a sanctuary and ship them off to a government funded facility called “Chimp Haven”, located in Treeport, Louisiana. The NIH provides the titles to those chimpanzees so they could be recalled back into research.

There are many reasons why a private sanctuary is better over “Chimp Haven”. The best reason that I can think of is a private sanctuary isn’t in the hands of the US Government or the research institutions and that you can actually guarantee the so-called retirement.

Abolitionist: This place that PETA had lined up for these animals from Primarily Primates, was there any guarantee given that these retired animals would not be used again for research purposes?

PF: It’s my opinion that it’s warehousing. If the NIH holds the titles to those animals and it’s government funded as a so-called less expensive way to retire chimpanzees rather than keep them in the institutions they were in. That’s lovely as long as it lasts but noone is going to guarantee that it will last forever. The researchers have the option of calling them back into research. I think it’s the nail in the coffin of the private sanctuaries if you begin to ship those animals that have a refuge there into a place like “Chimp Haven”, and that’s exactly what PETA wanted. They wanted those chimpanzees that were finally leaving the research at OSU and they were involved in cognition experiments. For example, you’d be in your single cell lock-up and you’d have a computer to bang on or you’d be given candy and other treats for grand performances. The researcher Sally Boyson didn’t want the chimpanzees to leave OSU but she couldn’t get the funding to have it continued. Knowing they would leave she wanted access to them in their final destination. Primarily Primates wasn’t going to guarantee her that. They weren’t prepared to say, “Come in and bring your computer” or some such thing.

Primarily Primates is not one of these kitshy-koo kind of places where you have to meet and greet people all the time and press and lots of picture taking. It’s a place where the animals are supposed to get adjusted to members of their own species and see their landscape and the trees and have some living quarters where respect is offered, not a tourist attraction. Sally wasn’t keen on Primarily Primates because it wasn’t going to be in her name so PETA filed this lawsuit to wreak havoc, they did just that but they lost their lawsuit. The good thing is on September 14th the judge finally dismissed it saying you don’t have the jurisdiction, meaning standing, to make these horrible claims. Their claims were “this is a hell-hole”, “the animals are dying”, “no-body is taken care of well” along with all of these allegations. They, of course, put people on the property to create trouble. Animals were let out of cages and then there would be cries that “there are dangerous animals escaping in the community”. They had somebody there that provided them with a affidavit who only, months earlier said wonderful things about Primarily Primates on a film that we (Friends of Animals) showed of course who later said it was a deplorable place and animals were being killed with guns. In truth, she shot a chimpanzee with a gun there. What I am saying is there were videos that were staged where you’re entering the bedroom of an animal meaning living in very closed quarters, it was dark at night, excrement in the area that was either imported or already there and that was shown as though that was the living quarters of the animal in question. That’s dishonest. These animals were living in outside living quarters and closures, sunlight not a dark, dingy, cockroach infested cell. PETA continue to stage photographs like that.

Just earlier this week the Fauna Foundation up in Canada had unfortunately fallen under PETA’s spell and Tony from that place sent a picture around called “In my Cell”. They said this was little Emma and she’s in a cell and look at the cockroaches. Little Emma would quite likely like to eat the cockroaches. She’s not quite as queasy about them as perhaps Tony is but first, Emma doesn’t live in a cell. I don’t know if they picked her up and put her in one but she’s with Jackson in an outside enclosure. Nothing about what they have said is true. It’s not true from my experience there which spans nineteen years. From my relationships with the principles there, the new executive director who is Steven Tello. I’ve known Wally Swett since 1988. I’ve been to Africa with him. Liberia. in 1999. Ghana in the Year 2000. We’ve worked on a chimpanzee project in Senegal. I’ve consulted with him. Has he been drinking in recent years (as they allege, yes I’m sure that’s true. He retired in August. The question is did Wally’s behaviour has caused animal cruelty and indeed it has not. Wally sometimes had bad judgment like allowing people like Terry Minchew who provided PETA with the affidavit on the property, allowing her to live in a house with her 30 cats, monkeys, dogs, goats and sheep – that was bad judgment because Terry Minchew is a hoarder. For her to be saying “Wally has too many animals” or “the place is dirty” and of course she’s living with some of the care staff and becoming partners with various people and having social lives that are totally inappropriate. It’s a mass of people who are opportunistic, motivated by philosophies that I think are counter to animal advocacy and the up-shot is that after PETA’s lawsuit was tossed on September 14th yet they waited until October 13th to orchestrate a police raid and they engaged the same Attorney-General. There are attorneys in the Attorney General’s office so they hooked up with this character called John Vinson who was the same person who conducted the last raid in 1992-93, accompanied then by Steve Wise who lost his law licence for 6 months in Massachusetts. What happened was a court smacked him for what they said was “angry, unethical violations and selfishness” so it wasn’t enough that he did the wrong thing once, he went ahead and did the wrong thing again. He allowed this police raid and they put Stefan Tello in handcuffs into a patrol car, they froze the assets, they threw people off the place and they installed this so-called Texas beauty queen, Lee Theisen-Watt. Ms Watt misrepresented her education, her background and maybe her goals in this. She was set up as the receiver accompanied by her attorney which is quite odd – his name is Robert “Skip” Trimble. He’s an ALDF lawyer and has been celebrated as a PETA activist. He was involved in trying to get the attorney-general to oppose the horse slaughter in Texas and has political connections and just boasted apparently to one care-giver I know at the sanctuary that he had returned from a hunting trip a week ago and was about to go out on another one. Everything I am telling you, well it’s like truth is stranger than fiction. It’s hard to imagine the number of people in line here but it goes deeper than PETA. Is Steve Wise still connected through some kind of vendetta, it’s likely he is. Are there a host of other well healed animal welfare groups sitting on the side-line participating but don’t really want a public persona, it’s likely there are. Is the HSUS there chomping at the bit and hoping that PETA’s successful. It’s horrifying to think so but their silence is deafening. What Primarily Primates deserve is a defense and that’s what Friends of Animals are committed to give them. When PETA commenced with this police raid and we realised that Primarily Primates weren’t able to pay their attorney fees we stepped in and offered help. We believe in them and we know that the caregivers are responsible and devoted people. The place has been assaulted and disgusting. We have just won our first successful appeal in court (see Friends of Animals latest press release).

Abolitionist: You are just back from the Texas proceedings that will determine the fate of Primarily Primates but what did you find when you inspected their sanctuary?

PF: I was there in May. I have been in Austin twice in the last two weeks for hearings so I’m going back and forth to court there. What we got was a stay, meaning they can no longer kill animals – I won’t call it euthanasia because it’s not. They are killing animals and they are shipping them out. 200 animals they shipped out the first few days including Wally Swett’s own 27-year-old horse. The idea that anybody would be so cruel when this horse had 60 acres of pasture and Wally had been the horse’s caregiver for 27 years just speaks volumes.

Abolitionist: So it’s PETA that’s shipping them out, is it?

PF: Yes. PETA is running the show there. This is all about PETA’s influence, PETA’s allegation and it’s PETA’s energy dispatching the people with whom they disagree with and asserting things that become popular because they are said over and over again. For example, they stage photographs. One vet helper named Elena who we have a lot of faith in, testified on the stand and this was not disputed that the police raid has been a three-ring circus and that Lee Theisen-Watt is devoted to interviewing and setting up opportunities for people to come in and bring t-shirts and little blankets that turn into filthy little rags once they have been thrown into the chimpanzee’s enclosures and you can’t get them back and to take photographs. In one series of picture taking operation they drugged an animal to take his photo. Now I don’t know how other examples one would have to hear after that but to back up your allegations that the animals are not well cared for and they seem psychotic, if you knew that they drugged an animal to take it’s photo wouldn’t that pretty much tell you how manipulative they are likely to be in general? So that wasn’t even disputed in court that they did that. All of the pictures/helicopter over-head last Friday when they arrived with the press and 24/7 interviews have caused a lot of stress. The Primarily Primates sanctuary is not used to that there. You see it’s the opposite of the typical kind of zoo/ tourist attraction. So a monkey is sick because they are very susceptible to stress. A Spider monkey died today and there are other Spider monkeys there that are sick. Uriah had its whole face torn up because these PETA idiots threw produce over the top of the cage. Uriah is used to being handled differently when he gets produce so that the dominant animal in that group called Josh isn’t trying to compete with other animals that are getting produce because he’s handled separately. He gets melons and apples that distracts him from worrying if Uriah is getting something. The point is you would have to be a person who’s used to caring for those individuals to know how to handle them. PETA volunteers are not those people and Lee Thisen-Watts doesn’t have the sensibility to give a hoot and there you have it.

Abolitionist: Thank you for telling us. It’s so shocking. The Animal Rights Movement needs to do a thesis on PETA and its history. They need to be tracked, for the over-all good of the movement and its continuance, to identify not only why they went wrong but at what point and how they went wrong. They certainly have never entertained a no-kill policy. A child knows that if you throw food into an animal enclosure then it sets up a food hierarchy and a fight amongst the animals enclosed. The Animal Rights movement is 30 years in the modern making yet PETA doesn’t have professionals dealing on these important issues. That in itself is remiss.

PF: Yes, you are right. If you were motivated for the right reasons, Number one; you wouldn’t conduct a police raid. Number two; you would be generous with your nineteen million dollar budget towards sanctuaries. Sanctuaries allow animals to leave exploitation and then you’d be going after the real perpetrators of animal cruelty but that’s not PETA’s business anymore. Their business has become something else and something I regard as quite sordid. They have created a lot of havoc and a lot of destruction and a no-end misery here. What the animal rights community needs to do is get out of it’s own way and stop acting like cultists and stand up to this organisation. People are calling me privately on the phone and they are saying we agree with you and how disappointed in recent years with PETA. Well, I have been disappointed for decades and let me tell you that the private sanctuary movement is going to be destroyed by this flock of people. It’s time the rank and file stood up to them.

Abolitionist: You have said, “there’s an ominous trend affecting the sanctuary movement especially with non-human apes”.

PF: That’s because PETA has brought up a suit in the name of non-human animals and then use it with the gall of sending these animals back into the institutions that use them for research purposes over again. This is deplorable and should be challenged. They want them either returned to OSU or sent to “Chimp Haven”. Again, “Chimp Haven” spells an end to the private sanctuary movement if it’s supported by the animal advocacy movement. It’s government funded.

Abolitionist: These animals that have already been moved out of Primarily Primates sanctuary, have they been killed by PETA yet?

PF: The animals that have arrived at the Houston SPCA so far, nobody knows their fate.

Abolitionist: Will you comment here on Peter Singer’s statement in SATYA saying he gives you the middle finger salute, an insult because of your objection to WholeFood’s “Compassionate” slaughter products and your refusal to play the game with the other 17 signatories.

PF: (she laughs). What? Only in a word or two? In truth, Singer ought to purport to be more sophisticated than that. What he really revealed was his anger towards his critics. And to think of all the people that wished that he had an argument with them because they like to celebrate the discourse between them, he put me on the map instead. I think it’s odd. I’m slightly amused by it but Singer come’s off as somebody that is a huge has-been and what we’ve got since Animal Liberation, the book was published, is a lot of regression. The idea that anyone thinks that that book catapulted the world to animal liberation, I mean this needs to be re-thought and reframed. Singer used the work of United Action For Animals, Friends of Animals in the mid-1970’s and I started there in 1974. The problem with Singer is he could never carry the ideas forward and now he writes insipid books and gets nice publishers for them. His idea that I should be a lock-step with the meat purveyor over at WholeFoods and should be aligned to receive the financial rewards from that kind of association, well, Friends Of Animals doesn’t intend to be a bureaucracy for the animal exploitation industry. We are not going to be sitting at the table with John Mackay. It’s not what we are about and that Peter Singer can’t stand that is frankly amusing.

Abolitionist: Lastly, you have just hinted at it in this interview Priscilla but let me see if I have understood it correctly. The Animal Rights movement as it stands now must let go of the smaller status of cultism its created for itself and move into the unchartered, unknown waters of political agitation so to centre itself to survive. And in this larger context these rich ‘animal’ organisations having sold the animal rights message out will be accountable for their actions and we have nothing to fear in bringing them to account, wouldn’t you agree?

PF: I would.

For more info go to: www.friendsofanimals.org

For Immediate Release: 8 November 2006

Contact: Priscilla Feral, President
Tel: 203.656.1522
E-mail: feral@friendsofanimals.org