VICTORY! EGYPTAIR Ends Transport of Monkeys to Laboratories After International PETA Campaign

For Immediate Release:
August 8, 2022

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

EGYPTAIR has informed PETA U.S. that it is no longer in the business of transporting monkeys from Africa and Asia to laboratories in the U.S. and elsewhere. This follows a three-month intense campaign by PETA entities around the world, which included protests in the U.S.—at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York and Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C.—and at airports in Frankfurt, London, Manila, and Paris; e-mails from more than 100,000 supporters of PETA entities; hundreds of phone calls; and online advertisements. PETA Asia also sent T-shirts and coffee mugs—emblazoned with artwork calling on the airline to stop cruel monkey shipments—to EGYPTAIR’s executives and sent an open letter to its CEO to company employees. Other organizations, including Action for Primates in the U.K., Stop Camarles in Spain, and One Voice in France, also campaigned to end the shipments.

Airline industry insiders first alerted PETA to a shipment of 720 macaques flown by EGYPTAIR from Cambodia to JFK on April 30. Records show the airline has flown 5,000 monkeys into the U.S. since March.

“EGYPTAIR’s decision will prevent thousands of monkeys from being ripped from their families, shoved into tiny boxes, and shipped around the globe to endure misery and death in laboratories,” says PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna. “Any other airline considering getting into this trade should think again—PETA is watching.”

In January, Kenya Airways announced it was ending its transport of monkeys to laboratories just 24 hours after discussions with PETA, and in June, Air France banned the practice after a decade-long campaign by PETA.

The macaque wildlife trade is steeped in violence and disease. A vast monkey-abduction pipeline has been funneling hundreds of thousands of wild-caught monkeys into the U.S. One species of monkey transported by EGYPTAIR was the long-tailed macaque. Last month, the International Union for Conservation of Nature upgraded the conservation status of long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques from “vulnerable” to “endangered.” The exploitation of these once-plentiful species as part of the international wildlife trade involving experimenters in the U.S. is a major factor in their dramatic population crash.

PETA notes that the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) admit that 95% of all new drugs that test safe and effective in animals are either unsafe or ineffective in humans. PETA scientists’ Research Modernization Deal provides a strategy for replacing animals with modern, human-relevant research methods. PETA supports the FDA Modernization Act, which would eliminate the agency’s mandate to require tests on animals in drug testing.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.