EGYPTAIR to Face Uproar at JFK Terminal Over Risky Monkey Imports
For Immediate Release:
January 2, 2024
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
On Wednesday, a troop of PETA supporters will cause a ruckus outside the EGYPTAIR departure terminal at John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport over the airline’s ongoing importation of hundreds of endangered long-tailed macaques for use in the animal experimentation industry despite the company’s previous ban on the practice and concerns about the spread of diseases that are transmissible to humans, including tuberculosis (TB).
When: Wednesday, January 3, 10 a.m.
Where: EGYPTAIR Departures, JFK International Airport (Terminal 1), Queens
Credit: PETA
“Cramming hundreds of terrified monkeys into cargo holds to be shipped around the world for experiments does nothing to advance human health and increases the risk of importing diseases transmissible to humans,” says PETA primate scientist Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “PETA is calling on EGYPTAIR to uphold its pledge to get out of the cruel and deadly endangered monkey trade.”
Monkeys imported for experimentation are captured in nature or bred on squalid farms, and those who survive illness and injury are packed into small wooden crates and locked inside EGYPTAIR’s dark cargo holds on the first part of their days-long journey to their final destination—laboratories, where they’ll be poisoned, mutilated, and killed. The industry also poses a danger to the public: Multiple shipments of monkeys infected with TB have been imported to North American labs, and monkeys from Cambodia have arrived infected with a bacterium so deadly that the U.S. classifies it as a bioterrorism agent.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.
For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.
