• White Coat Waste (WCW) just filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Defense (DOD) to force the release of photos, videos, and other records about secretive U.S. military primate labs in Thailand, Peru, and the U.S., where hundreds of monkeys are subjected to wasteful and deadly taxpayer-funded experiments.  
• The labs being investigated by WCW include the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research–Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (WRAIR-AFRIMS) in Thailand, the Pentagon’s largest primate laboratory.
• WCW recently uncovered that WRAIR-AFRIMS confines roughly 550 monkeys for abuse in tests involving sleep deprivation, surgical mutilation, and infection with diseases like malaria, Zika, dengue, typhus, shigella, and a monkey version of HIV. 
• The military repeatedly violated federal FOIA by failing to provide WCW with primate testing records requested between June and December 2025 about this Thai lab and other Pentagon facilities in the U.S. and abroad that expose monkeys to bioweapons, sicken them with viruses, and more.

Last year, a White Coat Waste (WCW) investigation exposed a U.S. Navy primate laboratory in Peru, where an at-risk monkey species is abused in dangerous virus experiments.  

This includes the Pentagon’s largest primate lab located in Thailand.  

WCW investigators recently uncovered this little-known overseas facility, which has quietly operated with millions of American tax dollars and minimal public scrutiny for decades. 

Operated by the U.S. Army in collaboration with the Royal Thai Army, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research–Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (WRAIR-AFRIMS) primate colony was established in 1980. 

Today, it is the only primate breeding colony and the largest monkey lab within the Department of Defense (DOD), with roughly 550 monkeys in captivity. 

Internal documents reveal that the facility breeds around 30–45 additional rhesus and cynomolgus macaque monkeys each year for use in painful testing. 

These monkeys are abused in experiments involving infectious diseases like malaria, Zika, dengue, typhus, shigella, and SHIV. They are surgically mutilated, intentionally infected with diseases, forced to ingest drugs, fed to disease-carrying mosquitoes, and subjected to sleep deprivation tests. 

A monkey at WRAIR-AFRIMS being forced to undergo a cruel sleep deprivation experiment.

Last year, the Pentagon even paid disgraced animal breeder Envigo $568,510 to ship 18 more monkeys from the U.S. to Thailand for testing. 

Troubling grant records also reveal Army purchases of marmosets and marmoset cages in 2025, suggesting that WRAIR-AFRIMS may be expanding its experimentation to include additional primate species.  

At the same time, a recent internal report notes strained colony operations and funding.

The colony is funded primarily through Pentagon appropriations, with individual experiments also bankrolled by DOD contracts and National Institutes of Health awards. 

The U.S. Embassy estimates that the WRAIR-AFRIMS facility operates with an annual budget of $30–35 million in taxpayer money.   

Despite the enormous cost to taxpayers, the Pentagon has provided little transparency on this monkey lab and others. 

In addition to failing to turn over records to WCW about its foreign labs, the military violated FOIA by not providing documents about its primate tests at Fort Detrick and the Uniformed Services University, where monkeys are exposed to bioweapons and infected with Ebola and other deadly diseases.

That’s why WCW has filed a FOIA lawsuit to demand documentation on this taxpayer-funded primate testing. 

WCW’s investigations and campaigns have exposed and ended the DOD’s dog and cat experiments. Now, it’s time to cut their monkey business, too. 

Taxpayers have a right to know how their hard-earned money is being spent — especially when it’s paying for cruel, wasteful animal tests in foreign countries.