Round Two: PETA ‘Lobs’ More Coconuts at Albertsons Execs

For Immediate Release:
November 11, 2020

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

To up the pressure on Albertsons to cut ties with Chaokoh, which a PETA Asia investigation revealed uses coconuts picked by chained monkeys, PETA is sending a second delivery of humanely picked coconuts to the grocery chain—and this time, it’s not just the CEO on the receiving end but also the rest of the company’s top brass in Boise. The delivery comes after Costco informed PETA that it had cut ties with Chaokoh and after more than 25,000 stores around the world—including chains Walgreens, Giant, and Food Lion—pledged not to sell coconut products obtained through monkey labor.

“It’s nuts for Albertsons to sell products made from coconuts picked by monkeys in Thailand who are chained, separated from their peers, driven insane, and kept in involuntary servitude for life,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA wants to crack open Albertsons’ executives’ hearts and get them to do right by monkeys and customers by telling Chaokoh that they don’t buy animal abuse.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—is sending coconuts to Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer Susan Morris, Group Vice President of Communications Christine Wilcox, Executive Vice President of Supply Chain & Manufacturing Evan Rainwater, and Director of Corporate Public Affairs & Diversity Teena Massingill.

For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

PETA’s letter to Albertsons’ executives follows.

November 11, 2020

Greetings from PETA. We applaud Albertsons for offering tasty vegan meats, cheeses, and other products for your customers and for your decision to post signs warning shoppers about the dangers of leaving dogs and children in parked cars over the summer. We are counting on Albertsons to take action on another important issue. Your CEO, Vivek Sankaran, has already recently received coconuts, and now, we’re sending these to you as well in the hope of finally cracking open a dialog about reconsidering your business relationship with Chaokoh, a brand sold by your company that was implicated in a recent PETA Asia exposé of Thailand’s coconut industry.

Our investigation revealed that Chaokoh is part of an industry that’s forcing monkeys—confined for life, sometimes with their teeth removed, always chained, and often driven insane from being deprived of everything that’s natural and important to them—to climb trees in order to collect coconuts. It seems that most (if not all) of these animals are illegally captured from the forest as babies. Their training is extremely abusive.

Please visit PETA.org/Coconuts to watch the undercover footage.

More than 25,000 other stores, including Costco, have pledged not to purchase products from this company that was implicated in forced monkey labor.

We hope you will act swiftly to remove cruelly sourced coconut products from your shelves. May we please hear from you soon?

Very truly yours,

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President