Russian Airline Bans Transport of Monkeys to Labs
PETA Prevails: AirBridgeCargo Stops Shipping Primates to Labs to Die in Experiments
For Immediate Release:
July 5, 2018
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Following a vigorous two-year PETA campaign that included thousands of phone calls and tens of thousands of e-mails from PETA supporters in just the past two weeks, Russian airline AirBridgeCargo has announced an immediate ban on transporting monkeys to laboratories, where they’re caged, poisoned, addicted to drugs, mutilated, infected with disease, and killed.
Previously, the airline imported monkeys from China to the U.S. through Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. In June, PETA received a tip from a whistleblower that the airline was considering a plan to expand this practice to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). PETA alerted its members and supporters to this—and after two weeks of pressure, AirBridgeCargo announced that it had not only canceled any plans to start flying monkeys through LAX but also implemented a formal policy banning the transport of nonhuman primates on the company’s entire fleet.
“AirBridgeCargo’s decision will make it even harder for laboratories to obtain monkeys to confine to cages, infect with diseases, force-feed chemicals to, and perform invasive surgeries on,” says PETA Senior Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. “Air France is now the only remaining major airline that transports primates to be killed in laboratories, and PETA will keep pushing the airline to ground this cruel practice.”
PETA notes that some primates shipped to laboratories come from squalid monkey farms, while others are torn away from their homes and families in the wild. They are crammed into small wooden crates and transported inside dark cargo holds for as long as 30 hours before they reach their final—and deadly—destination. James Cromwell, Dr. Jane Goodall, and Peter Gabriel have all joined PETA or its affiliates in speaking out against this practice.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
