For Immediate Release:
July 5, 2022
Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382
Dulles, Va. – A “mutilated monkey” led PETA supporters as they converged on Dulles International Airport this morning to unfurl a banner proclaiming, “Cruelty Doesn’t Fly: EGYPTAIR, Ban Monkey Shipments!” The action is part of a campaign by PETA entities calling on EGYPTAIR to stop shipping monkeys to laboratories, as other major airlines have done. Just days ago, after a longstanding PETA U.S. campaign, Air France announced that it will end all shipments of monkeys for the experimentation industry. More photos of the protest are available here.
“Monkeys are removed from their homes in nature or bred on squalid farms, stuffed into shipping crates, and loaded onto EGYPTAIR planes for terrifying 30-hour journeys to U.S. laboratories,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on EGYPTAIR to join nearly every other airline in refusing to ship monkeys slated to be used in failed experiments in this age of state-of-the-art, modern methodologies such as organs-on-chips and bioinformatics.”
In just the past three months, the airline has reportedly flown nearly 5,000 monkeys into the U.S., posing a grave public health risk and causing immense suffering to the animals, who are packed into small wooden crates and locked inside cargo holds. Those who survive the journey to laboratories may be mutilated, poisoned, deprived of food and water, forcibly immobilised, infected with painful and deadly diseases, psychologically tormented, and killed.
During the past two weeks, PETA entities have held protests to call on EGYPTAIR to stop shipping monkeys to laboratories, including at EGYPTAIR terminals in Frankfurt, London, and New York.
More information about the EGYPTAIR campaign is available here.
