Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way.

PETA to Hainan Airlines: Don’t Ship Monkeys to Labs

Chinese air carrier Hainan Airlines—which banned shipping monkeys to the U.S. a decade ago after discussions with PETA—has recently gone back on its word and shipped hundreds of monkeys to their deaths in U.S. laboratories. Let it know that its participation in the global monkey exploitation pipeline is unacceptable.

On August 9, Hainan Airlines shipped 720 sensitive, endangered long-tailed macaques—who were crammed into 144 wooden crates—from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to Beijing, China, (a 4.5-hour trip) and then to Chicago (a 13-hour flight). The monkeys were forced to sit in their own feces, urine, and blood and were terrified of what they might face next.

After arriving in Chicago, they were presumably packed into trucks and eventually taken to their final destination: a laboratory where they’ll be used for experimentation, facing torment and pain.

PETA U.S. has contacted Hainan’s executives to ask them to reconsider their involvement in this cruel industry and stop shipping monkeys to laboratories immediately. No ethical company should want its name to be associated with this vile and sordid trade.

EGYPTAIR, for instance, recently announced that it would stop transporting monkeys to laboratories, following three months of vigorous campaigning by PETA entities worldwide, including protests in Frankfurt, London, Manila, New York City, Paris, and Washington, D.C. Other organizations—including Action for Primates in the U.K., Stop Camarles in Spain, and One Voice in France—also campaigned to end the shipments.

Hainan Airlines: Stop Sending Monkeys to Laboratories!
While PETA U.S., our supporters, and the public have persuaded nearly every major airline in the world to stop transporting monkeys to laboratories, Hainan seems determined to continue this cruel trade with its shameful about-face in policy. In 2012 and again in 2013, its executives pledged to PETA U.S. that it would no longer ship monkeys destined for U.S. laboratories, adding that they “fully agree to the fundamental purposes of PETA U.S. and appreciate your great effort in the protection of animal rights.”

Every year, thousands of monkeys are transported to the U.S. to be imprisoned in laboratories and tormented in experiments in which they’re often cut open, poisoned, crippled, addicted to drugs, shocked, and killed. These sensitive individuals are bred in captivity on squalid factory farms. Their parents and grandparents were torn away from their families and homes in the wild and traumatized again when their own babies were snatched away from them on the breeding farms. The monkeys are crammed into small wooden crates and transported in the dark and terrifying cargo holds of planes. Once they arrive in the U.S., they wait in fear until they’re loaded into trucks and transported to infamous facilities like Covance (now part of Envigo).

Like all other primates, monkeys are highly social animals who live in tight-knit groups and use vocalizations, body language, and facial expressions to communicate with each other. In laboratories, they’re deprived of everything that’s natural and important to them.

Please urge Hainan Airlines to keep its promise and not send monkeys to laboratories or be involved in this cruel industry in any other way. The airline should stick by its word and join other industry leaders in prohibiting shipments of primates destined for laboratories and laboratory suppliers.

You’re welcome to use our template letter, but putting the subject line and message into your own words will help draw attention to your e-mail.

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Zhu
Tao
Hainan Airlines
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Amy
Fu
Hainan Airlines

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