Don't Fly Monkeys to Their Deaths in Labs, Says PETA
For
Immediate Release:
May
2, 2012
Contact:
Kristin
Richards 202-483-7382
New York -- Wearing monkey masks and prisoner outfits and crouched in stacked cages with signs that read, "Air France: Cruelty Doesn't Fly," PETA members will gather outside the U.S. headquarters of Air France on Thursday to call on the airline to reverse its policy of transporting monkeys and other primates to laboratories, where they are caged, experimented on, and killed:
Date: Thursday, May 3
Time: 12 noon
Place: Outside Air France's U.S. headquarters, 125 W. 55th St. (near the intersection with Sixth Avenue), New York
"By shipping primates to laboratories, Air France is just as guilty of terrorizing and killing these animals as the experimenters who wield the drills, scalpels, and syringes," says PETA Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. "PETA is calling on Air France to keep its policy on schedule with the airline industry's overwhelming opposition to this bloody trade."
Air France is part of a shrinking list of airlines—including Air China and Vietnam Airlines—that still ship nearly 20,000 primates each year from Asia, Africa, and Latin America to U.S. laboratories. These primates, many of whom were torn from their families in the wild, are crammed into small wooden crates and transported in dark cargo holds for nearly 30 hours, often on passenger flights just below unsuspecting customers. When the monkeys reach their final destination, they are confined to small cages and tormented in cruel—and often deadly—experiments.
In January, Air France canceled a shipment of 60 monkeys from the African island of Mauritius to Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories, a notorious laboratory in the U.S., after PETA exposed the plan and launched a vigorous social-media and e-mail campaign to end it.
The PETA "monkeys" are also protesting outside United Airlines' headquarters in Chicago today. United—which has had a long-standing policy against shipping primates to laboratories—is revising its policies in light of its recent merger with Continental Airlines, which was the last major U.S. airline to ship primates to laboratories. United has refused to confirm that it has maintained its ban.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
