Owning A Monkey Soon To Be Illegal

By Marcus Gilmer in Miscellaneous on Jun 25, 2008 4:09PM

Floods? Housing crisis? Crippled economy? Bah! says Congress. By a 3-to-1 margin (302-96), the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Captive Primate Safety Act which would amend the currently imposed Lacey Act by adding "nonhuman primates" to the list of "live animal of any prohibited wildlife species." The bill has 26 sponsors, including Mark Kirk (R), Jan Schakowsky (D), and Luis Gutierrez (D), all of Illinois.

Animal rights groups such as the Humane Society, ASPCA, and PETA have supported the act, which would cost about $4 million annually over the next five years, mostly so the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can hire more workers to enforce the new law. Though I'm no big animal activist, I love monkeys (who doesn't) and am all for protecting them from moronic owners who probably couldn't even keep a hamster alive, much less a primate. But...um...yeah, thanks, Congress. Way to keep your priorities in line. Now that we have this out of the way, maybe we can FINALLY focus on what's really important: eliminating steroids from baseball and fixing college football's bowl system.

Image of pygmy marmoset monkey courtesy of Scott Kinmartin