Don't Fly Monkeys to Their Deaths in Labs, Says PETA
For Immediate Release:
June 18, 2012
Contact:
Kaitlynn Kelly 202-483-7382
Los Angeles — Wearing monkey masks and prisoner outfits and crouched in stacked cages with signs that read, "Cruelty Doesn't Fly" and "Deplane Monkeys," PETA members will gather outside Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Tuesday under a banner that says, "Air France, Air China, Vietnam Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, Philippine Airlines, SHAME ON YOU," to call on these airlines to reverse their policies of transporting monkeys and other primates to laboratories, where they are caged, experimented on, and killed.
Date: Tuesday, June 19
Time: 12 noon
Place: Outside the LAX Imperial Cargo Complex, at the intersection of Aviation Boulevard and 111th Street, Los Angeles
"By shipping primates to laboratories, these airlines are 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 these airlines to bring their policies in line with the airline industry's overwhelming opposition to this bloody trade."
A shrinking list of airlines—which includes Air China, Vietnam Airlines, Air France, China Eastern Airlines, and Philippine Airlines—still ships 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 inside dark cargo holds for nearly 30 hours, often on passenger flights just below unsuspecting customers. When the monkeys reach their final destinations, 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.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.