Performance Food Group Drops Coconut Milk Tied to Monkey Labor Following PETA Asia Investigation

For Immediate Release:
May 31, 2023

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Performance Food Group has confirmed that it will stop sourcing coconut milk from Thailand following a PETA Asia investigation revealing that monkeys are chained, whipped, beaten, and forced to spend long hours picking coconuts from trees. In thanks, PETA is sending the locally based food distribution company—which has more than 150 centers nationwide—delicious monkey-shaped vegan chocolates.

“Performance Food Group’s decision will help prevent monkeys from being kidnapped and sold as coconut-picking machines,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “By cutting ties with Thai coconut suppliers, leaders like Performance Food Group are helping PETA push the industry away from using and abusing monkeys, who belong in nature with their families.”

PETA Asia’s investigation—its third into Thailand’s forced monkey labor industry—documented that a worker struck a screaming monkey, dangled him by the neck, and then whipped him with the tether. A female monkey reportedly used for breeding was kept chained alone in the sun without access to water, while other young monkeys languished in cages. Coconut pickers said that the monkeys sometimes incur broken bones from falling out of trees or being yanked by their tethers, and a worker confirmed that most of the monkeys were kidnapped from their families in nature, even though the species exploited by the coconut trade are threatened or endangered.

Performance Food Group joins HelloFresh in rejecting coconut products from Thailand due to cruel monkey labor, and PETA is rallying the public to demand that Whole Foods follow suit.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.