PETA Renews Call for Airline to Stop Transporting Primates to Laboratories
For
Immediate Release:
May
17, 2012
Contact:
Kristin Richards 202-483-7382
Norfolk, Va. -- After learning that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cited Air China in April for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act when a likely laboratory-bound crab-eating monkey sustained injuries after being transported to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in a dangerously sharp enclosure, PETA is renewing its call for the airline to end the practice of shipping primates slated for experimentation.
During the USDA inspection of Air China, it also observed another shipment of 110 crab-eating macaques, probably destined for laboratories as well. Nearly every major domestic and international airline—including American, Delta, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and dozens of others—refuses to transport primates to laboratories, where they are caged, tormented in painful experiments, and then killed.
"For primates imported for experimentation, the suffering starts well before they are locked into laboratory cages," says PETA Vice President Kathy Guillermo. "PETA is calling on Air China to join the dozens of airlines that have refused to participate in a bloody trade that tears primates away from their families and ships them in terrifying conditions to laboratories, where they are caged, poisoned, and killed."
Although nearly every major airline in the world has a policy against shipping primates to laboratories, a handful of airlines—including Air France, China Eastern Airlines, Philippine Airlines, and Vietnam Airlines—continues to transport tens of thousands of primates from countries such as China, Mauritius, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Some of these primates are bred in captivity on cramped, squalid monkey farms, while others are torn away from their families in the wild. The traumatized animals are crammed into small wooden crates and transported for as long as 30 hours in the dark and terrifying cargo holds of planes, often on passenger flights just below unsuspecting customers.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.