Casey Affleck Drafts Letter in Support of Bill That Protects Baby Monkeys in Massachusetts

Casey Affleck, who has repeatedly stuck his neck out in support of animals, is at it again.

The Oscar-winning actor has drafted a letter to legislators in his home state of Massachusetts — Senator Lydia Edwards and Representative Michael Day serve as chairs of the joint committee — to urge them to support a new bill that would prohibit animal testers from separating baby monkeys from their mothers for lab experiments.

News of the letter comes as the bill heads to a committee hearing on July 29. Per a post on the Massachusetts legislature website, the bill was presented by Senators Joan Lovely with Mike Moore and Mike Brady and would prohibit the removal of infant primates from their mothers for the first year of their lives. It has been referred to the joint committee on the judiciary, and Edwards and Day serve as chairs of the committee.

“I am writing to urge you to lend your full support to the groundbreaking bill (H.1948, S.1167) recently introduced in the Massachusetts legislature to protect infant primates from the devastation of being taken away from their mothers for experimentation,” Affleck writes in the correspondence, a copy of which was received by The Hollywood Reporter from a PETA rep. “As a parent myself and someone who is close to my own mom, I find these sorts of experiments especially devastating.”

The bill follows PETA’s earlier campaign to stop research being done by Margaret Livingstone on baby monkeys at Harvard. Affleck has previously worked with PETA to call attention to dog experiments at Texas A&M, animal abuse in circuses, dehorning of cows on dairy farms and against monkey menopause experiments at University of Massachusetts.

The full letter sent by Affleck to Edwards and Day is below.

Dear Senator Edwards and Representative Day,

I am writing to urge you to lend your full support to the groundbreaking bill (H.1948, S.1167) recently introduced in the Massachusetts legislature to protect infant primates from the devastation of being taken away from their mothers for experimentation. As a parent myself and someone who is close to my own mom, I find these sorts of experiments especially devastating.

I recently learned from PETA that one laboratory in Massachusetts was removing infant rhesus macaques from their mothers at birth for the sole purpose of deliberately interfering with their visual development by sewing the baby monkeys’ eyelids shut or forcing them to live in strobe-like lighting conditions. Many of these young monkeys were then killed and dissected. As disgusted as I am to learn this was happening at all, I am grateful that Massachusetts leadership is working to make sure this horrific practice never happens again in the state.

I applaud you both and the other Massachusetts legislators working to protect infant monkeys in the state of Massachusetts. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Casey Affleck