"Nobody cares about much out here in the sticks," as one resident put it. The place is just part of the landscape, like the sprawling plantations that claim much of the nearby countryside or the Salkehatchie River that snakes through on its journey south. Locals seem to know little about the facility-and care even less. Greg Westergaard said it was against LABS' policy to speak to the press. James Vickers, "but experience has shown us that when we deal with the media we always lose." When approached for an interview in 1993, a LABS spokesperson declined. Today, LABS is the next best thing to invisible: it is impenetrable.
Its workers are sworn to secrecy when hired. But as the animal welfare movement gains ground here and abroad, LABS has retreated from public view. Back then, companies like LABS operated largely unencumbered by government restrictions or eroding public opinion. In the early days, the company had an open relationship with the community, even offering tours to school kids. LABS, which ranked 7th in primate importers for 1995–1999, is in its third decade of supplying monkeys to the biomedical industry. The Non-Human Primates are sold to research labs for a variety of experimental protocols: medical trials, drug and product testing, and for harvesting organs and tissues to transplant in humans. The company does some research on site but its primary business is buying and selling NHPs, as the product appears on invoices and shipping forms. "LABS" comes from Laboratory Animal Breeders Services, the name of the company before Bionetics bought it in 1996. Helena Sound where the company maintains colonies of rhesus macaques. He trusts that authorities would warn him if the monkeys posed any health risk to him or the animals he keeps on his property.Īmong Bionetics' corporate satellites is LABS of Virginia, Inc., which operates three primate research and breeding centers in South Carolina-one in Yemassee, another six miles away in Early Branch, and a third on Morgan Island, some 400 wild acres in the St.
Tarry, who has lived in Yemassee all of his 83 years, said he doesn't really know much about his odd neighbors. "They came out with a (dart) gun, but it went down in the ditch and got away," he said. Most of that money comes from the government, as much as 95 percent in 1996.Ĭleveland Tarry points to the tree in his back yard where he saw a monkey that had escaped from the primate facility nearby. Bionetics today has service contracts valued at more than $1 billion, according to the company's Web site, and generates $80 million in yearly revenue.
They operate out of Newport News, Va., at Bionetics Corp., created in 1969 to support NASA's first mission to Mars. In fact, the company's owners are banking on it. There is no clue that this is the address of a company with ties to big names and big money, doing business in places as far flung as Jakarta, St. From the road, the unauthorized see only a brick building with a row of mobile homes behind it. Nothing marks the entrance but a sign warning visitors they must be authorized to enter. At the edge of town, surrounded by thick woods and a tall fence topped with razor wire, sits Yemassee Primate Center. Its only traffic signal is a caution light blinking at the center of town-little more than a string of weathered buildings clustered along the tracks. Yemassee straddles the Hampton County line 25 miles north of Beaufort.
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