By Julia MacKenzie, Los Angeles representative for
Stop Animal Exploitation NOW! (SAEN)
May 2012
I was interested in this case because of my interest in discovering the origins of the primates that were being used in laboratory experiments in what turned out to be a bit of a Pandora’s box. Not only did we discover how nefarious this trade is, the utter lack of laws, the ineffective regulations, how few live animal shipments are physical inspected by anyone but this also led to the lifting of a curtain hiding the corruption of the Guyanese government including the Wildlife Management Division and the Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, Robert Pisaud.
As the Tamarinds, Capuchins and Squirrel monkeys were removed from the crates all where found to be grossly underweight and dehydrated. Most were just over half the weight of what they should be. Discovered alongside the surviving monkeys were 8 dead Tamarinds that weighed between 269g and 386g (5 female and 3 male. Tamarinds generally weigh between 470g and 700g. ) The one dead monkey that had been spotted four days previously was already well decomposed. There were 2 female and 2 male dead Capuchins weighing between 1087g and 1622g (General weight of Capuchins is 2 – 4kg) and three dead Squirrel monkeys weighing between 365g – 521g. (Average weight of Squirrel monkeys is 695g – 829g)
According to USDFWS records from January 1, 2010 through November 16,
2011, 20,895 primates were imported through the port of Los Angeles alone. A
majority of these animals were destined for research laboratories like
Covance Research Products Inc and Charles River Laboratories who are amongst
the most notorious for incidents of animal abuse Primate imports have
escalated in recent years as countries like Guyana and Mauritius exploit
their natural resources to make a profit. The accelerating trade is
contributing to the near extinction of all species of primates.
In September 2011 the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the
District Attorneys office bought 10 counts of animal cruelty charges against
Miami based customs animal broker, Robert Matson Conyers after 15 out of the
25 monkeys he was handling through Miami died in transit. This was a
significant case not only because of the outrageously high mortality rate of
this one shipment but because it shone a spotlight on the nefarious live
animal import trade, specifically primates captured in the wild destined for
research laboratories or breeding colonies where their offspring are sold to
laboratories. The case caught my attention when I read about the charges in
the press as I had been interested in tracking where the monkeys in labs
were being imported from and decided to follow this case and what a
Pandora’s box it proved to be.
As airline carriers like El Al cease to transport “wild caught” primates
for research animal brokers/sellers in countries such as Thailand, China and
Mauritius now first send the monkeys to a breeding facility and sell their
offspring to the labs instead or hide the origins of the monkeys and then
send them onto labs. The U.S is the largest single importer of primates for
research in the world.
In this particular case the 25 monkeys were trapped in Guyana and were paid
for by a breeding facility in Thailand. They were shipped from Guyana to
Miami by a man called Akhtar Hussain, arriving Feb 4th, there is no
information as to when or how they were captured, crated or how long they
were in the crates prior to departing Guyana. They were originally scheduled
to depart Miami on Feb 5th on Lufthansa to Thailand via Frankfurt. The
entire debacle starts for Conyers when the monkeys arrive in Miami and
Lufthansa declines the shipment because temperatures in Europe have dipped
below 40c. Conyers picks up the monkeys in four crates from Amerijet and
takes them back to his warehouse. He eventually ends up keeping them until
the Friday Feb 8th, during which he desperately tries to find an airline
that will ship them out of the U.S. He turns to his client, wild
animal importer/exporter, Anna Melino who is based in Canada, for help
finding a flight and she in turn books them on a China Southern flight out
of Los Angeles for th evening of Friday Feb 8th.
During this time Conyers stated under oath that he fed, watered and lovingly
cared for these monkeys ensuring they had ample daily sustenance, cleaned
the cages, even moved the crates around to provide better air circulation.
Trouble is, at a routine USFWS inspection at the American Airlines warehouse
the agent discovers a dead monkey in one of the crates. Conyers had
booked the monkeys onto an American Airlines flight out of Miami bound for
LAX, there, to connect with China Southern. According to the USFWS testimony
it was very hard to determine the health of the monkeys as the crates were
so small and dark but he took some photos of inside the crates and
discovered the dead, rotting monkey. He immediately raised the alarm and
told AA to ground the shipment, called Conyers who, according to Conyers ,
rushed over with rubber gloves and plastic bin liner in hand, ready and
willing to assist the USFWS. Meanwhile, the USFWS agent returned to his
office to collect the appropriate inspection gear and a colleague to help
and bare witness. Upon returning to the AA warehouse they discover that the
airline had ignored the USFWS and loaded the crates onto the plane. At this
point neither the CDC nor the USDA appear to have been involved. I am
curious to know why Conyers was “allowed” to house un-quarantined monkeys
for a week in his warehouse as according to the CDC guidelines “the CDC must
review proposed plans for each shipment of nonhuman primates arriving the
U.S., and also monitors shipments upon arrival at ports of entry and the
quarantine facilities, where imported animals must be kept for at least 31
days after arrival.” Or the USDA who according to their regulations, “is
charged with enforcing the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) which includes regarding
the handling, treatment, use, and domestic and international transport of
certain species used or intended for use in research, testing, education,
exhibition, breeding, and sale of pets. The AWA includes minimal standards
for carriers and intermediate handlers, primary enclosures used to transport
nonhuman primates, mode of transport, food and water requirements, care in
transit, transit terminal facilities, and handling.”
These monkeys weren’t meant to be sitting in the U.S but here they were
and here they were with a dead monkey in one crate and at that point no one
knew what it had died of.
The next few days were a calamity of careless neglect on behalf of the
responsible parties. Conyers was heard screaming on a later taped phone call
between himself and a USFWS investigating officer, “I just wanted to get rid
of these goddam monkeys” and “ I lost money on these fucking monkeys.” It is
obvious from his testimony that he clearly wants to wash his hands of the
shipment as soon as they are on the American Airlines plane. Anna
Melino, the client, is in Canada and barely available. M.C Cargo in LA
is hired by Melino to make the 1. 5 hour transfer of the monkey crates from
AA to CSA and is told about the dead monkey but has no idea, no training, no
clear instruction on how to go about that. He calls Jet Pets who tell him
they are not authorized to remove the dead monkey as there are strict
regulations regarding that and advise him to call authorities, which he
doesn’t as he feels pressured by Conyers and Melino to “just move along the
shipment.” The USFWS doesn’t manage to connect from Miami to LA as the
officer in LA is out of the office, the USDA and CDC are still apparent by
their absence and the monkey crates, dead monkey and all are loaded onto the
China Southern flight for Guangzhou on Friday Feb 8th. Now here it is
interesting to note that to even touch live animal cargo you need a permit
which M.C Cargo does not have and didn’t know you needed until this issue
came up. Carlos Meraz from M.C Cargo testified that he knows “many people
delivering animals to airlines for 20 years with no certificate.”
On Saturday night the sales agent for China Southern Airlines who booked the
crates onto the Guangzhou flight is contacted by CSA agents on the ground in
China and told that there is no one to receive the crates, pay for
quarantine, handle transfers, feed them and no instructions with the animals
etc so what should they do? The sales agent goes back to her office and
proceeds to call everyone she can including Conyers, Melino and Carlos Meraz
at M.C Cargo but could not track anyone down. Apparently cell phones haven’t
been invented yet. She then told China to water the monkeys and left the
office around 11pm LA time, as there was not much more she could do. At this
point she appeared to be the only one expressing concern over the animals
actual welfare as she had also tried to find out how and what to feed the
monkeys. Coming up empty handed, Guangzhou can do nothing but return the
crates on the next available flight, which would arrive back at LAX on
Sunday around 5am. On February 10th the USFWS in LA gets a call from
Conyers asking them to stamp the airway bill for the monkeys to be returned
to Miami. M.C Cargo would handle the crates and would deliver the paperwork
to them that afternoon. The USFWS went out to the airport to meet Meraz and
was informed by the Public Health Service that there was a dead monkey in
the crate and when the USFWS arrived, Jet Pets was already there trying to
feed the monkeys through the 2” wire mesh. Upon full inspection the agent
discovers that a large number of the monkeys are now dead and confiscates
the shipment. He returns to his office to make arrangements for the
shipment to be sent to an appropriate quarantine facility and notifies his
supervisor of the event.
For the agents at the USFWS this becomes one of the worst nights of their
lives, the CDC won’t allow them to move the crates unless they go to a
quarantine facility and the only one around is the L.A Zoo which is full.
Where was the CDC when Conyers was holding them in his warehouse for five
days? They didn’t appear to be so strict then! The poor monkeys wind up
sitting in the crates on the tarmac at LAX overnight until all of the “red
tape” has been cleared to move them and house them. The story grows
exponentially sadder here as the full plight of these creatures is revealed
at the quarantine center of the LA Zoo the next day.
As the Tamarinds, Capuchins and Squirrel monkeys were removed from the
crates all where found to be grossly underweight and dehydrated. Most were
just over half the weight of what they should be. Discovered alongside
the surviving monkeys were 8 dead Tamarinds that weighed between 269g and
386g (5 female and 3 male. Tamarinds generally weigh between 470g and 700g.
) The one dead monkey that had been spotted four days previously was already
well decomposed. There were 2 female and 2 male dead Capuchins
weighing between 1087g and 1622g (General weight of Capuchins is 2 – 4kg)
and three dead Squirrel monkeys weighing between 365g – 521g. (Average
weight of Squirrel monkeys is 695g – 829g)
The L.A Zoo veterinarian team administered emergency care to the surviving
monkeys and started to make arrangements with the San Diego Zoo for more
permanent housing and care for them as their quarantine was full. Both the
L.A Zoo vet and the San Diego Zoo vet testified at the trial that they were
shocked and extremely concerned for the remaining nine monkeys whose very
survival was unsure at that point. All were emaciated and had been subjected
to at least five days of starvation. Wait…hadn’t Conyers said he had been
feeding and watering them well the previous week? Why yes he had, so how did
the monkeys get into such a deplorable condition? Could it have been their
ordeal to China and back? Well, the veterinarians appeared pretty convinced
that if the monkeys had been adequately fed and watered for the five days
prior to their arduous journey to China, they would not have seen such a
high mortality rate and emaciation in the animals. One of the
surviving Tamarinds had in fact been in such horrible condition when they
pulled her out of the crate she was unresponsive and the decision was made
to euthanize her. Approximately a week later another monkey succumbed to the
ordeal and had to be euthanized leaving just 8 monkeys out of 25 that made
it through hell and back.
After necropsies were performed, the cause of death was determined to be
chronic starvation and dehydration. Meaning they didn’t just not eat for a
few days, this was over an extended period of time. The dead monkey that was
noticed by USFWS on Friday Feb 8th was so decomposed by then that the cause
of death was unidentifiable. The monkey was thought to have been dead around
5 days due the autolysis of the body. According to the veterinarians the
crates the monkeys were transported in was also a problem, they were way too
small and monkeys who are not familiar with each other or from the same
family group, should apparently never be housed together. In such a small
confined crate where there are limited resources like food and water,
monkeys will fight. Monkey families work out a complicated hierarchy over
time and being captured in the wild, crammed into crates, having limited
access to food and water is obviously an extremely stressful situation to be
in already without putting monkeys together who are not familiar with each
other. Interestingly enough one of the alternate jury members told me after
the case that he knows that animal “traders” use smaller crates to save
money on transport costs.
Now Conyers had also said in his testimony that he had hired a man called
Mike Lilly to help him feed and look after the monkeys during the week of
Feb 4th – 8th. Mike Lilly, whose contact details were never shared nor could
be found by law enforcement, was said to come on a daily basis helping
Conyers feed the monkeys an assortment of fruits, vegetables and cereal,
change the paper in the cages and give them water. Conyers himself says he
checks inside the crates 3-4 times a day, sees food on the bottom of the
crates but not a dead monkey. Unlike everyone else who appears to be
extremely tentative about opening the crate doors to feed and water them
lest the monkeys escape, Conyers says that he did this to feed and water
them stating that “They’re not going to bum rush you. They’re more scared of
you then you are of them”. The veterinarians also stated they did not
believe that housing the monkeys in crates, in a van inside a warehouse
would provide enough air circulation so Conyers counters this with a
statement saying he moved the crates out of the van on a daily basis for
that reason.
By this time the trial had lasted five days and the Defense began with their
witnesses on Monday April 2nd. In comes “Transport specialist and
Importer/Exporter of Wild Animals,” Anna Melino. Melino has a long list of
associations she belongs to as well as being a certified groom. Well that
should prove helpful with monkeys. I’m sure that most of these associations
are paid membership types so are not professional character references by
any means. Ms. Melino testifies that she has worked with Conyers for 10 – 15
years and has never had a problem with him. It’s obvious Ms. Melino is a
trader in wild animals and has no hands on dealings with the shipments
besides the fact she resides in Canada so is just part of the money making
machine. The Defense calls two more character witnesses one of whom
testifies that he saw Conyers feeding the animals but his testimony doesn’t
quite match up with the evidence. He says he saw Squirrel and Marmosets
(Tamarinds) in one crate but they were housed separately so he couldn’t have
done. He also doesn’t much remember what the van looked like but he does
remember seeing exactly what fruits and vegetables they were being fed and
even lists them off exactly as Conyers and Melino had done.
Conyers himself chooses to testify which is a surprise to all involved. He
is very careful and deliberate with his choice of words. He describes what
he was hired to do and seems to infer that it was Lufthansa’s fault because
they canceled the shipping deal. The fact that the freezing cold weather in
Europe was the reason didn’t seem to move the needle. He says he collected
the primates from the airline and bought them to his warehouse where he
daily fed and watered them with “his friend” Mike Lilly. Conyers was
encountering problems finding an airline to ship the monkeys to Thailand
because they generally all fly through Europe, which was not taking exotics
at that time so he called Melino to tell her of the situation. It took
another day or so to book them on the China Southern flight. On Friday as
they prepared to move them Conyers called her to tell her of the dead monkey
but she only called M.C Cargo to have Jet Pets remove it but did not appear
to call anyone official. The Defense went into great detail of the feeding
and watering of the primates and even presented two receipts showing
purchase of the food. The receipts, strangely enough, were never entered
into evidence so no on else saw them. He again stressed that he checked the
crates 3 – 4 times a day, opened the doors to feed and water them but never
saw the dead monkey, that in fact his belief is that American Airlines
killed the monkey during transit on Friday Feb 8th. The only problem here is
that there is no damage to the crate and the monkey photograph and the
necropsy report shows the monkey in a decomposed state so was clearly dead
prior to Friday.
When the DA cross-examines Conyers he seems to be holding back. His face is
a mask of contempt as he testifies that he did not call a veterinarian or
any other officials in LA to take care of the dead monkey in the crate on
Friday. He repeated that he did more then his fair share of the deal by
taking care of them in Florida and once they left Miami they were no longer
his concern or responsibility. At this point the judge in the case decides
to enter a “causal element” in which Carlos and Anna Melino could be
considered accomplices and cites “an act or omission that causes danger to
an animals life” from Penal Code Section 597 (b) cruelty to an animal. The
jury apparently, will decide this.
The Defense closes their arguments emphasizing that the condition of the
monkeys was unknown in Guyana, that animals coming from Guyana are known to
be “of poorer quality”, again the handbag analogy pops into my mind. Conyers
attorney, Murrey insists that the “fact” the monkeys starved to death is a
“theory” and tells the jury they have to convict him “beyond a reasonable
doubt” over and over again. He talks about how the USFWS is really to blame
and that ONLY Conyers showed any concern for the animals as evidenced by his
eagerness to show up at AA once the dead monkey was discovered armed with
rubber gloves and a plastic bag. The image of Conyers running to airport
eagerly brandishing rubber gloves and bag runs through my mind again in
cartoon strips. Murrey infers the L.A Zoo and San Diego Zoo veterinarians
aren’t experienced enough with their combined 50 years of working with
exotic animals to determine really how the monkeys died. Again, this baffles
me. He points out that neither the USFWS, Anna Melino nor M.C Cargo was
charged for anything only the poor victim Robert Conyers. Conyers sits in
his chair with the hangdog expression looking as much like the innocent
victim as possible.
We are all biting our lips; the jury looks like they’re watching the washing
dry. We have our fingers crossed that the DA rouses them with his final
comments and for all intensive purposes it sounds like he does. He produces
a masterful final speech that would make Hollywood cry but not this jury. He
is careful and pronounced in his urgings for the jury to once again listen
to the taped USFWS phone conversation, especially the parts where Conyers
seems to jokingly state that he didn’t think that even 9 would survive the
ordeal. He emphasizes the veterinarian testimonies that the monkeys had been
starved for days, not just for the past three days of travel to China and
back. He even states with some humor that if they had been fed the amount
Conyers testified he did they should be so fat as to not fit through the
doors of the crates! He talks about how Conyers is eager to blame everyone
else but the fact remains, the monkeys were starved to death and were under
his care for five days out of seven prior to being discovered dead and
dying. He questions why he didn’t sound the alarm with officials and Conyers
responses of, “I didn’t know the phone numbers” being woefully inadequate.
His final words of expressing to the jury why the DA’s office is so intent
on prosecuting a case with about “just” monkeys were, “The reason we are
here, it’s important the wildlife on this planet is protected from
predators. Not the kind that kills for food, we are here to protect these
animals from predators that kill for money.”
I wanted to applaud and cheer, give him a standing ovation. We were all
convinced the jury could not ignore all of the facts in this case, the
obvious contradictions of the defense witnesses, the damming testimony of
the veterinarians but just under two hours later a laughing jury returned
the “not guilty” verdict. I felt like I had been punched in the guts. It was
stunning. Never once did I hear Conyers regret the incident, feel sorry for
the outcome, say it was sad, bad, horrible….nothing. He showed absolutely no
signs of remorse whatsoever. In fact the opposite, was still clearly
infuriated that the charges had been bought against him and him alone.
Most of the jury would not speak to the DA or us afterwards but did remain
behind to congratulate Conyers, a sight that made me so sick I had to leave.
A few of the jury did stop to explain their verdict; the two alternates were
clearly very unimpressed and thought he was guilty. The others felt like “he
had done his best” and “my dog sometimes refuses to eat” and “even the vets
said they had to have been given some food otherwise all of them would be
dead”. The Defenses chaotic ramblings had worked. Another twelve jury
members and we may have had a different outcome and at that point I was
fully indoctrinated into the failings of the legal system. And then
again, there is always “the bloody glove.”
The DA and the USFWS in LA did an outstanding job and put together the most
careful and articulate case whereas the Defense often lost his papers,
couldn’t remember names, couldn’t work equipment, got facts wrong and had to
be cut off by the judge on more then one occasion but somehow this worked
with the jury.
I was interested in this case because of my interest in discovering the
origins of the primates that were being used in laboratory experiments in
what turned out to be a bit of a Pandora’s box. Not only did we discover how
nefarious this trade is, the utter lack of laws, the ineffective
regulations, how few live animal shipments are physical inspected by anyone
but this also led to the lifting of a curtain hiding the corruption of the
Guyanese government including the Wildlife Management Division and the
Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, Robert Pisaud. They even
went so far as to defend Aktar Hussein who was, alongside Conyers, charged
with 10 counts of animal cruelty but conveniently disappeared never to be
heard of again. The corruption travels right up the food chain to the
World Bank apparently whose involvement in profiteering of the exploitation
of the natural world is currently well underway in Guyana:
http://www.guyanachronicleonline.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=41283%3Awmd-clears-the-air-on-misleading-articles-on-wildlife-trade&Itemid=12
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