LABELLE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida appeals court has quashed a lawsuit against Hendry County over two of its monkey farms.
The Naples Daily News reports the initial 2014 suit charged the county had illegally approved a huge monkey breeding farm on the Lee County border without warning area residents. It was later amended to include another farm near Immokalee. When Circuit Judge James Sloan ruled the county hadn’t violated Florida’s Sunshine law last year, the three plaintiffs appealed.
After the three-judge panel’s decision Wednesday, no more appeals are possible.
Monkey farming has become a lucrative industry in rural Hendry, where over the past dozen years, the 38,000-person county has become the primate breeding capital not just of Florida, but of the United States, with four farms capable of housing at least 10,000 animals.
