For Immediate Release:
November 19, 2021
Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382
West Palm Beach, Fla. – Outside a busy local Publix store on Tuesday, a caged PETA “monkey” will rattle the bars and draw customers’ attention to reasons why the company should join others in ending sales of coconut milk from Thailand for which monkeys are defanged, chained, and trained with force and fear to climb trees and shake down coconuts. The action follows a PETA Asia investigation revealing that one supplier, the Chaokoh company, isolates, cages, and chains monkeys for life—many of whom were taken from their families in the forest.
When: Tuesday, November 23, 12 noon
Where: Publix, at the intersection of S. Rosemary Avenue and Fern Street, West Palm Beach
“Milk from coconuts picked by abused monkeys doesn’t belong on store shelves any more than wild monkeys belong in servitude,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on Publix to reject products that involve forced monkey labor.”
More than 28,000 other stores—including chains Target, Wegmans, Costco, Walgreens, Food Lion, and Stop & Shop—have banned coconut milk brands that use coconuts picked by monkeys.
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 on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
