Group Calls On China Southern Airlines to Join Others in Banning the Transport of Primates Destined for Mutilation and Death in Experiments
For Immediate Release:
August 11, 2011
Contact:
Robbyn Brooks 202-483-7382
Norfolk, Va. — After receiving revealing inside information, PETA is calling on the president of China Southern Airlines to cancel a planned shipment of 80 macaques from China to U.S. laboratories. These highly intelligent and sensitive animals will be crammed into 32 wooden crates and placed in the cargo hold of a China Southern Airlines passenger plane destined to arrive in Los Angeles on August 15.
Upon arrival in the U.S., the primates will endure a 1,500-mile trip in the back of a truck. They will then be quarantined at the Alice, Texas, facility of Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories (SNBL), a company whose Washington-state facility was recently cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for isolating more than 4,000 monkeys in cages, in violation of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA). SNBL was also recently fined $31,000 for numerous other violations of the AWA and garnered headlines after a whistleblower revealed that a monkey was boiled to death when her cage was put into a high-temperature cage-washing machine while she was still in it.
After quarantine at SNBL, the monkeys will be sent to the laboratories of Harlan, a corporation that is paid to test on animals and that also breeds and sells primates to other laboratories.
PETA's undercover investigations have revealed that primates used in experiments are confined alone to cramped and barren cages and subjected to extremely painful and invasive procedures. Over time, many animals go insane and exhibit stereotypical behavior, including self-mutilation and endless pacing in their cages.
"By transporting monkeys for experimentation, China Southern Airlines is complicit in a bloody business that condemns hundreds of thousands of primates to confinement, mutilation, poisoning, and death in laboratories," says PETA Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. "China Southern Airlines should let animal abusers know that cruelty doesn't fly."
Many major passenger and cargo airlines refuse to ship primates to laboratories, including American Airlines, Delta, United, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and China Airlines. Cathay Pacific and Qantas refuse to transport any animals destined for laboratories.
For more information, please visit StopAnimalTests.com.