In a boost for one of the largest clinical research organizations in the U.S., the officials who oversee an international treaty governing endangered species voted to defer a recommendation to suspend shipments of long-tailed macaques — which are regularly used in medical research — from Cambodia.
The move by a committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, came after a request by the Trump administration and, as a result, any suspension is unlikely to be reconsidered for up to a year. Meanwhile, Cambodia will have to provide evidence that none of macaques that shipped out of the country are caught in the wild.
The recommendation to suspend shipments came after a CITES committee pointed to an episode three years ago when U.S. authorities investigated a smuggling ring in Cambodia that improperly caught and shipped the primates. The smugglers allegedly obtained them from national parks and protected areas in Cambodia, and then shipped them with labels falsely claiming the macaques were bred in captivity.
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