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Primate Products makes Koko sad

Smash HLS has received a tip that The Gorilla Foundation has a close working relationship with Paul Houghton, the founder and CEO of Primate Products.

The Gorilla Foundation is best known for its work with “Koko,” a gorilla famous for her sign language skills. Koko has learned more than 1,000 ASL signs. (In the above image, Koko makes the sign for “really stupid.”) The foundation is based in Woodside, California near the Houghton family home (see our previous post about Houghton’s mansion here).

Visitors to The Gorilla Foundation’s website can learn how Koko expresses happiness, sadness, anger and many other emotions. “Her empathy for others has changed our perception of gorillas forever,” the foundation writes, adding, “Gorillas clearly deserve basic personal rights such as protection from harm.”

Of course, the macaque monkeys that Primate Products sends to cruel deaths inside vivisection labs also are intelligent, emotional and very social animals. Don’t these monkeys deserve the same protection from harm as Koko?

Write to Penny Patterson, the founder of The Gorilla Foundation and Chairperson/President of the Board of Directors and urge her to end all contact with Mr. Houghton.

Penny Patterson, Ph.D.
Email: penny@koko.org (copy: contactus@koko.org, education@koko.org, service@koko.org)
Phone: (800) 634-6273 or (650) 216-6450
Post a comment: www.facebook.com/pages/Koko-The-Gorilla-Foundation/289961865248

-Sample Letter-

Dear Dr. Patterson:
I was shocked to learn that The Gorilla Foundation is close friends with Paul Houghton, the CEO of Primate Products. Are you aware that Mr. Houghton imports and breeds primates for sale to research and testing labs? Isn’t Mr. Houghton’s business at odds with The Gorilla Foundation’s mission of protecting gorillas? The Gorilla Foundation’s relationship with Mr. Houghton damages your reputation and will discourage people who care about animal welfare
from supporting your organization.

8 thoughts on “Primate Products makes Koko sad

  1. Dear Dr. Patterson:
    I am shocked to learn that The Gorilla Foundation is close friends with Paul Houghton, the CEO of Primate Products. Mr. Houghton imports and breeds primates for sale to research and testing labs. Isn’t Mr. Houghton’s business at odds with The Gorilla Foundation’s mission of protecting gorillas? The Gorilla Foundation’s relationship with Mr. Houghton damages your reputation and will discourage people who care about animal welfare from supporting your organization.

  2. I sent a message to them on facebook. I also posted a comment but Im sure they will not post it. How hypocritical this is. Just goes to show u how people really are.

  3. i just sent the following message to them;please feel free to copy/edit paste it into your own letter to them:
    It has just recently come to my attention that The Gorilla Foundation is close friends with Paul Houghton, the CEO of Primate Products. I was shocked, disgusted and horrified to learn this, as I had always admired and respected The Gorilla Foundation and had followed its work with Koko the Gorilla and her amazing intelligence accomplishments. Are you aware that Mr. Houghton imports and breeds primates for sale to research and testing labs? Isn’t Mr. Houghton’s business at odds with The Gorilla Foundation’s mission of protecting gorillas? The Gorilla Foundation’s relationship with Mr. Houghton damages your reputation and will discourage people who care about animal welfare from supporting your organization. I strongly urge you to disconnect/divest yourself and your organization from any association with Primate Products and its CEO. An organization such as The Gorilla Foundation cannot claim to support gorillas and also support and be affiliated with in any way such a heinous organization as Primate Products whose purpose is to provide other sentient primate beings for torture and murder in testing and research labs.

    With great concern,
    Marie Louise Morandi Long Zwicker

  4. If anyone posting or involved in this website takes any kind of meds you are a hypocrite. I work in biotech and we use primates for stroke research. All of our primates are well taken care of because they are expensive as SHIT and we love them so we need to keep them healthy. The bottom line though, really, is you can’t simply choose ONE COMPANY that deals with primates for research. If you are truly against all primate research you need to include every single pharmaceutical company all over the world. And you have to stop taking those heart meds and anti-depressants and blood pressure pills and allergy meds because every thing you shove in your face was brought to you by PRIMATE RESEARCH.

    1. I think you’re missing the point. Koko and the Gorilla Foundation sole purpose is to save primates, yet they have conducted staff meetings at the founder of Primate Products estate. Think about it.

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