PETA has discovered that earlier this month, air carrier Hi Fly shipped 900 endangered monkeys to Canada from an unaccredited monkey farm in Cambodia, apparently on behalf of a company under federal investigation. The move appears to sidestep the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s recent crackdown on monkey imports into the U.S.
We need your help to tell this company to stop fueling the global trade in monkeys immediately.
Tragic Irony
In what can only be described as the height of hypocrisy, Hi Fly and its nonprofit group have painted at least one of its planes with the image of an endangered animal, and employees mug for cameras in front of it, holding signs that read, “United for Wildlife to Combat Trafficking in Air Transport.”
The long-tailed macaques Hi Fly shipped to Canada are members of an endangered species, and such monkeys have allegedly been trafficked to U.S. laboratories by the thousands. Despite what it condemns in front of the cameras, the airline is transporting monkeys for an industry that can’t prove they weren’t abducted from their forest homes and passed off as bred on farms.
The Horror
After being packed into cramped wooden shipping crates and forced to sit in their own feces, urine, and blood for the long journey, the terrified and likely sick monkeys are trucked to laboratories, in which they’ll be slowly poisoned in toxicity tests or used for other excruciating experiments before they’re killed.
Our Response
PETA and Action for Primates are calling on the Canadian Wildlife Service, Health Canada, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to halt primate importation immediately. PETA also asked Fish & Wildlife whether the agency has alerted other countries that Cambodian monkey imports should be subjected to extra scrutiny.
We, along with Abolición Vivisección, Action for Primates, and One Voice have written Hi Fly, urging the airline to end its involvement in this sordid trade, but so far it has refused to respond to our concerns.
PETA and other animal protection groups have persuaded nearly every major airline in the world to stop transporting monkeys to laboratories, but it seems that Hi Fly prefers to fight the tidal wave of public sentiment and appease the animal experimentation industry instead.
Behind the News
This move follows U.S. Department of Justice indictments of Cambodian officials and nationals for allegedly selling monkeys abducted from their forest homes and falsely labeled as bred in captivity. The U.S. halted imports from Cambodia because there is currently no way to ensure monkeys were not snatched from nature, but apparently Canada didn’t get the memo.
What You Can Do
Please urge Hi Fly to live up to the standards the airline, at least publicly, proclaims and stop sending endangered monkeys to their certain deaths in laboratories. You can do so by sending polite comments to the following person:
Paulo Mirpuri
President and CEO
Hi Fly
[email protected]
Please feel free to use our sample letter, but remember that using your own words is always more effective.
