Morrissey Urges Whole Foods to End Thai Coconut Milk Sales
Morrissey Urges Whole Foods to End Thai Coconut Milk Sales
London – Ahead of Morrissey’s sold-out US tour, the former lead singer of The Smiths dispatched word to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos – the owner of Whole Foods – and Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel urging them to please please please stop selling coconut milk from Thailand, where monkeys are kept in servitude and trained with violence and privation to pick coconuts as revealed in multiple PETA Asia investigations.
In the letter (available ), Morrissey fumed: “PETA has sent Whole Foods top executives three separate investigations into the Thai coconut industry that have documented appalling cruelty to monkeys: most chained by their necks, kept in solitude, exposed to all weather without shelter, some having their teeth pulled out, all trained with appalling violence, and all forced to spend their lives climbing tall trees to twist off heavy coconuts. … These are our fellow primates with feelings greater than those Whole Foods management has shown. You have these monkeys’ misery on your hands, and I urge you to do something ethical now …. Please decide to sell only coconut milk sourced from outside Thailand.”
Because the coconut industry and the Thai government lie about the systemic reliance on forced monkey labour, it’s impossible to guarantee that any coconut milk from Thailand is free of it. PETA entities worldwide are calling on Whole Foods to sell coconut milk only from countries where monkey labour isn’t used, such as India, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka.
Morrisey’s letter follows the launch of the international campaign that has seen PETA entities dump humanely picked coconuts outside Whole Foods stores in the US and at London’s Piccadilly Circus. The group is urging Whole Foods to join meal delivery service HelloFresh – which, after hearing from PETA, recently confirmed that Thai coconut milk will be banned from its meal-kit service.
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, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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