Update: The Israeli attorney general has decreed that the High Court must permanently halt this shipment of monkeys, citing that it is illegal to transport monkeys captured in the wild for experiments and that Israeli authorities had not approved the use of the animals for the type of experiments that Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories sought to perform.

Thanks to the efforts of the Israeli animal-protection organizations Behind Closed Doors and Let the Animals Live, with assistance from PETA, a shipment of 90 monkeys destined for a laboratory has been halted, at least temporarily. The monkeys were to be shipped from Mazor Farm, an infamous monkey-breeding facility in Israel, to Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories (SNBL), a testing laboratory and primate supplier in the United States.

Crude, Cruel, and Illegal

Armed with information supplied by PETA, Let the Animals Live presented evidence to the High Court of Justice in Israel demonstrating how SNBL torments animals and repeatedly violated U.S. animal welfare laws. Israeli officials also reviewed scientific data showing that primates make poor models of human disease and for predicting drug response in humans. Additionally, Israeli law does not allow the export of wild-caught monkeys, and we pointed out to Israeli authorities that 70 of these 90 monkeys were torn away from their families in the wild.

In response to these compelling arguments, the Israeli attorney general decreed that this shipment is legally problematic, and the High Court has halted the shipment, demanding that SNBL produce its own evidence showing how it plans to use the monkeys in experiments.

Making Sure Cruelty Won't Fly

PETA also contacted the airline that had been prepared to accept this shipment and urged it to join the growing number of airlines that refuse to transport primates to laboratories.

Stay tuned—if the Israeli government does ultimately allow the shipment to proceed, we may ask you to contact this airline and demand that it stop delivering primates to be tortured in experiments.

When we told you that Air France was planning to ship 60 monkeys to the notorious Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories (SNBL) this week, you came through with tens of thousands of e-mails, Facebook posts, tweets, and phone calls—and thanks to your quick action, Air France has now confirmed that the shipment has been canceled!

Just Say Non to Shipping Primates to Labs

Immediately upon learning that the monkeys were to be shipped from a Bioculture-owned monkey farm on the African island of Mauritius to Paris and then on to Chicago, where they'd be loaded onto a truck bound for a facility operated by SNBL, PETA got in touch with key executives at Air France urging them to cancel the shipment.

But with so little time to persuade Air France to do the right thing, PETA swiftly appealed to members and supporters to make sure that the airline got the message. And did it ever—so many of you contacted Air France that the company stopped accepting public comments on two of its high-profile Facebook pages and shut down its corporate phone lines!

While Air France's decision to cancel this shipment is great news, PETA is now encouraging the French flag carrier to join the majority of leading airlines in putting formal policies in place prohibiting all future shipments of primates to laboratories.

How You Can Help Keep Primates Out of Labs

Please join PETA in urging the airline industry to stop transporting primates destined for cruel experiment.

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In the triumphant finale to a long, hard legal struggle over a suit filed by PETA and citizens of Guayama, Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rican Supreme Court upheld the decisions of the lower courts that the monkey-breeding facility built in Guayama by Bioculture, Inc., was constructed illegally and therefore cannot be opened for business!

The court also denied Bioculture's motion to reconsider the ruling. So, as Kathy Guillermo, PETA's vice president of laboratory investigations, put it, "The final nail is now in Bioculture's coffin, and the 4,000 monkeys and generations of their offspring who would have suffered and died for the company's profit have been officially spared."

Muchas gracias to everyone who helped put a stop to Bioculture's plan to capture monkeys from their homes in the wild, imprison them in cages, and then sell their offspring for use in painful and deadly experiments at notorious facilities such as Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories, Charles River Laboratories, and Covance. 

Now, let's put another nail in the nasty monkey-pimping-and-torture coffin. Click here to urge airlines that still transport nonhuman primates to U.S. laboratories for cruel experiments to cut out the monkey business.

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A bit of good news from the Great White North: After years of pressure from animal rights activists—and after hearing from PETA recently—Air Canada, one of only two major North American airlines that still fly primates to laboratories, is taking steps to end the shipments. The airline has requested permission from the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) to enact a ban on transporting primates destined for experiments, a practice that the CTA currently requires Air Canada to engage in. PETA had been in contact with Air Canada about its policy as part of an international campaign to stop airlines from transporting primates to laboratories, where they will be caged, experimented on, and killed. 

Recently, PETA exposed appalling cruelty to monkeys at one of the largest importers of primates in the U.S.—Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories (SNBL) in Everett, Washington—after being contacted by a distraught worker there. The photos and video footage recorded by the whistleblower show sick, distressed monkeys suffering after being injected with chemicals and subjected to violent handling.

Please support the growing number of compassionate and progressive airlines—including Delta, American Airlines, and British Airways—that are saying "No" to primate abuse, and click here to ask the Canadian Transport Authority to grant Air Canada's request to ban the shipment of primates to labs.

Every year, more than 124,000 primates are tormented and killed in U.S. laboratories. Have you ever wondered how these intelligent and sensitive animals wind up in these hellholes in the first place?

Some primates are born in laboratories, forced to exist from cradle to grave as living "tools" exploited by experimenters who perform painful, invasive procedures on the animals, and then they're tossed out like so much trash when the experimenters are done with them.

For tens of thousands of other primates, the journey begins thousands of miles away in Asia and Africa, where—at the behest of global animal testing multinationals like Charles River Laboratories and Covance—they are bred in cramped, squalid breeding mills or are trapped or netted in the wild. Ripped away from their families, the traumatized primates are shoved into cramped wooden crates and shipped in the noisy and terrifying cargo holds of planes, often with unsuspecting passengers just a few feet above them.

One of the worst drivers of the miserable primate trade is animal testing conglomerate Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories (SNBL), which brings nearly 3,000 primates into the U.S. each year for use in experimentation. Recent photos and video footage leaked to PETA by a whistleblower at an SNBL laboratory in Everett, Washington, show sick, distraught monkeys imprisoned in barren steel cages. The whistleblower reports that monkeys suffered untreated wounds from being stabbed repeatedly with needles to have blood drawn multiple times a day, and that workers handling the monkeys were so rough that they bloodied the animals' noses and broke their fingers and toes.

Nearly every major airline—including Delta Airlines, Qantas, American Airlines, British Airways, Aer Lingus, Cathay Pacific, and dozens of others—have agreed not to transport primates to laboratories, but some, including Air Canada, Air China, Air France, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Philippine Airlines, and Vietnam Airlines—continue to profit off shipping primates to their deaths.

You can help primates by clicking here and telling these airlines that cruelty doesn't fly with you and that it shouldn't fly with them either.