Investigations
Safer Human Medicine sued Decatur County over monkey breeding deal
Chair Pete Stephens said a December 2023 vote failed open-meetings rules before the authority revoked bond approval.
In Bainbridge, Georgia, Safer Human Medicine sued the Decatur County-Bainbridge Industrial Development Authority in February 2024 after local officials pulled back tax abatements and bond approval for a planned macaque breeding site that would have held up to 30,000 animals.
YouTuber Tyler Oliveira reported from Yemassee, South Carolina, and Bainbridge in a piece posted Nov. 1, 2026. He opened at Alpha Genesis, the primate supplier where 43 young rhesus macaques escaped in November 2024 after a caretaker left an enclosure door unsecured.
Yemassee police warned residents to lock doors and windows and to call 911 rather than approach the animals. Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard told CBS News the group stayed near the facility until traps and thermal cameras helped recover all 43 by Jan. 24, 2025.
He parked outside the Alpha Genesis compound, where an employee told him roughly 6,000 macaques were bred on site. He asked for a tour and was refused. When he returned posing as a monkey enthusiast, staff ordered him off the property and filmed his license plates beside fences the facility said carried 7,000 volts.
The same supply chain runs through Morgan Island in Beaufort County, where federal breeding colonies hold thousands of herpes B-positive macaques destined for U.S. biomedical labs.
In late 2023 the Bainbridge industrial authority and county commissioners approved Project Liberty, a Safer Human Medicine facility with a full decade of tax abatement and bond financing that local opponents said totaled hundreds of millions of dollars in public support. The Bainbridge newspaper The Post-Searchlight put "tax abatement for primate husbandry" on its front page.
Activist Vina Merritt said she learned of the project from that story and organized neighbors who packed county meetings. Chair Pete Stephens later said the December 11, 2023 session had not been properly noticed, making the initial vote "not legal or binding." On Feb. 2, 2024, the development authority voted 8-1 to revoke the bond resolution, and commissioners rejected the abatements.
Residents cited the Alpha Genesis escape, wastewater fears along the Flint River, and Safer Human Medicine's record. Merritt pointed to a prior Envigo case in which federal inspectors removed about 4,000 beagles from neglect at a Virginia breeding operation tied to company leadership.
At a commissioner meeting he filmed, an elected official acknowledged the county had signed agreements and then rescinded its endorsement while multiple lawsuits sat in court. When he pressed for a yes-or-no on whether the farm would be built, the official said only judges could answer and offered an office appointment instead of a public update.
Safer Human Medicine filed suit in the Middle District of Georgia seeking orders that the authority close the bond transaction and honor project and payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements. WSB-TV reported the company pegged construction at about $396 million and promised up to 263 jobs.
Discovery in the federal case was stayed while residents and the state sought to intervene. On Jan. 28, 2026, U.S. District Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner granted District Attorney Joe Mulholland's motion to join the dispute, according to The Post-Searchlight. A company spokesperson said state courts had already rejected Mulholland and that the question was whether lawfully approved agreements should stand.
Merritt said she was running for Decatur County commissioner in District 1, with early voting open ahead of the Nov. 3, 2025 general election.
Source video: I Exposed the Island of STD-Infected Monkeys…