ASDA Says No to Thai Coconut Milk After Monkey Abuse Exposé

ASDA Says No to Thai Coconut Milk After Monkey Abuse Exposé

London – ASDA has become the first international retailer to agree not to source coconut milk from Thailand after learning about PETA Asia’s new undercover investigation into the use of monkeys in the country’s coconut industry. ASDA’s new own-brand coconut milk range will be sourced from the Philippines, instead. PETA has asked ASDA to extend this policy to branded Thai coconut milk products and urges everyone to avoid buying them in the meantime due to the rampant abuse.

Photos from the investigation are available here, and video footage is available here. Broadcast-quality footage is available upon request.

PETA Asia’s third exposé implicates coconut pickers, brokers, farms, and monkey-training operations in nine provinces, including top-producing ones. One trainer was caught on camera dangling a screaming monkey by the neck and striking him with a tether. One monkey used for breeding was kept chained alone in the sun, without access to water, while other young monkeys languished in cramped cages. Coconut pickers said that the monkeys sometimes incur broken bones from falling out of – or being yanked down from – the trees, and a worker confirmed that most monkeys are kidnapped from their families in nature, even though the species exploited by the coconut trade are threatened or endangered.

“ASDA has taken compassionate action to avoid cruelly obtained coconut milk, and we urge the Thai government to take meaningful steps towards ending the exploitative practice of forcing captive monkeys to harvest coconuts,” says PETA Director of Vegan Corporate Projects Dawn Carr. “PETA is calling on retailers to stop selling any Thai coconut milk products until monkeys are no longer used and abused for profit.”

PETA Asia’s latest investigation found that the use of monkey labour is pervasive throughout the Thai coconut-farming industry. It links forced monkey labour to Chaokoh and Ampol Food Processing (whose parent company is Theppadungporn Coconut Co), Cocoburi, Tropicana Oil, Thai Pure Coconut Co, Ampawa, Edward & Sons Trading Co, Suree and Aroy-D and many other brands.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Contact:

Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]

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