PETA US has uncovered evidence that Africa’s largest airline, Ethiopian Airlines, has shipped thousands of endangered monkeys halfway around the world for use in cruel and deadly experiments.
The airline, which appears to have ties to an alleged illegal international monkey-smuggling ring, reportedly flew 250 endangered long-tailed macaques from Ethiopia to the US on a gruelling journey, even though the company previously told PETA US that shipping monkeys was against company policy. The monkeys were first shipped to Ethiopia from the East African nation of Mauritius on a different airline.
Please take action below to urge Ethiopian Airlines to join nearly every other major airline in the world by refusing to ship sensitive beings to laboratories.
Over 12,000 Kilometres of Misery
Monkeys transported to laboratories are packed into tiny wooden shipping crates and forced to sit in their own faeces, urine, and blood for hours-long journeys. The terrified and likely sick animals are ultimately trucked to laboratories, where they’re deprived of food and water, mutilated, poisoned, forcibly immobilised in restraint devices, infected with painful and deadly diseases, psychologically tormented, used in a battery of other excruciating experiments, and eventually killed.
Frequent Flyer Violator
In July 2023, Ethiopian Airlines was cited by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for giving a ground crew improper feeding and watering instructions for 336 monkeys crammed inside crates in a cargo hold for the 12,384 kilometres from Ethiopia to Georgia. After the monkeys were finally unloaded from the plane, they spent 95 minutes on the tarmac without shade in 29-degree heat. The crates of monkeys were then roughly handled as workers packed them into trailers for transport to laboratories, causing further distress and likely physical harm.
The USDA also cited the airline in January 2023 for bringing 584 monkeys into the US without mandatory health certificates, which made it impossible to track whether the animals carried one or several of a plethora of pathogens that can infect humans.
Numerous Ethiopian Airlines shipments have included monkeys taken from Mauritius, a small island where tuberculosis outbreaks on monkey-breeding farms are well documented. These shipments pose an imminent threat to public health because tuberculosis is highly infectious and can easily be transmitted from monkeys to humans.
Fleet of Frauds
Ethiopian Airlines has ties to a Southeast Asian black market monkey-smuggling ring, which allegedly abducts wild-caught monkeys from their natural habitat and falsely labels them as “captive-bred” before they’re flown to the US
A federal trial revealed that Ethiopian Airlines flew hundreds of these allegedly laundered monkeys from Cambodia into the hands of US laboratory supplier Worldwide Primates.
Help Ground All Monkey Shipments
Ethiopian Airlines’ monkey shipments drain forests of endangered monkeys, threaten public health and safety, and fuel the insatiable animal experimentation industry.
Please take action today to urge it to stop shipping monkeys to laboratories for use in cruel and deadly experiments.