Photos: Protester Disrupts Airline Expo Over Air France’S Cruelty To Monkeys

For Immediate Release:

16 September 2014

Contact:

Ben Williamson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327, ext 229; [email protected]

Action Is Latest Salvo in PETA Campaign Calling On Air France to Stop Shipping Primates to Laboratories

London – Just minutes before Air France Executive Pieter Elbers’ speech – which focused on “The Future of Passenger Experience: How Can Airlines Meet the Demands of the Next Generation of Travellers” – at Islington’s Business Design Centre, a PETA campaigner took centre stage to give the audience her demand. Brandishing a banner that read, “Air France: Stop Shipping Primates to Labs”, the campaigner informed the shocked crowd that Air France is one of the last major airlines in the world that flies thousands of terrified monkeys every year to laboratories, where they’re caged, cut into, poisoned, crippled, deprived of food and water, infected with deadly diseases and killed. She was escorted from the building. Photos are available here, here and here.

“When almost all of the world’s major airlines have stopped shipping monkeys to their deaths in laboratories, it’s clear where the future of the airline industry is headed”, said PETA Director Mimi Bekhechi. “PETA’s motto reads, in part, that ‘animals are not ours to experiment on’, and we’re calling on Air France to act now to end this bloody trade.”

Many of the monkeys who are flown to laboratories around the world have been torn away from their mothers’ arms and stolen from their jungle homes. Crammed into tiny wooden crates in the cargo holds of commercial flights under the feet of unsuspecting passengers, they endure a dark and terrifying journey. The animals are then transported to facilities, where they face horrors such as mutilation, poisoning, food deprivation, infection with painful diseases and psychological torment. After enduring this torture – sometimes for decades – these intelligent animals will ultimately be killed. Since China Southern Airlines’ announcement in March that it is banning shipments of primates to laboratories – after three years of campaigning by PETA and our international affiliates – the pressure is building on Air France, which is now one of the only major airlines still giving primates a one-way ticket to experimentation and death.

James Cromwell, Dr Jane Goodall and Peter Gabriel have all spoken out against Air France for shipping monkeys to laboratories.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.

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