Photos: Protesting ‘Monkeys’ Caged Outside French Embassy

For Immediate Release:

21 August 2014

Contact:

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

PETA Activists Demand That Air France Stop Shipping Primates to Laboratories

Photos of the event are available here, here and here. More are available from Rex Features, the European Pressphoto Agency, Matrix Picture Agency and others.

London – A group of PETA supporters wearing monkey masks and prison uniforms locked themselves in cages outside the French Embassy in London today. The protesters were demanding that Air France join every other major airline in the world and stop flying 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.

“French diplomats and the public should know that Air France, France’s flag-carrying airline, is the last commercial airline still facilitating and profiting from the torture of highly intelligent and sensitive monkeys”, says PETA UK’s Kirsty Henderson. “These animals are not only subjected to painful procedures but also deprived of everything that is natural and important to them, leaving them desperately lonely, traumatised and psychologically damaged.”

Air France is the only major airline in the world that still ships primates to laboratories. Some of these animals come from squalid monkey farms, while others are torn away from their homes and families in the wild. They are crammed into small wooden crates and transported inside dark cargo holds before they reach their final – and deadly – destination. Air France shipped at least 5,500 monkeys to US laboratories in 2013 and thousands more to laboratories across Europe. James Cromwell, Dr Jane Goodall and Peter Gabriel have all spoken out against Air France for shipping monkeys to laboratories

For more information about cruel and wasteful animal experiments, please visit PETA.org.uk.

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