PETA’s Complaint Prompts $1,000 Penalty Against Airline for Illegal Monkey Shipment

Update (May 31, 2024): When is shipping monkeys for use in laboratories both cruel and illegal? Apparently, when Hainan Airlines and Envigo are involved.

In a rare move, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has levied a $1,000 penalty against Hainan Airlines after confirming PETA’s report that the company violated the federal Animal Welfare Act by flying 720 monkeys more than 8,000 miles from Cambodia to Chicago—without being registered with the agency as required.

The penalty comes after we contacted the USDA, pointing out that the agency had canceled Hainan Airlines’ registration in May 2022, making the company’s August 2022 shipment of endangered long-tailed macaques (details below) illegal.

We’ve now confirmed that Hainan Airlines still has no registration and appears to be out of the dirty monkey-transport industry.

News of the illegal shipment came from a PETA whistleblower who reported that the monkeys were destined for an Alice, Texas, facility operated by Envigo Global Services Inc., a company that has repeatedly shown that it values profits over animal welfare.

You may remember PETA’s undercover investigation into Envigo’s beagle-breeding facility in Virginia, which led to the closure of the operation and the release of 4,000 dogs for adoption. Envigo, now owned by a company called Inotiv, does no better with monkeys. In 2019, the USDA cited Envigo’s Texas facility for failing to feed 25 monkeys for six days. Two of them had to be euthanized because they were so severely starved.

A 2024 federal trial implicated its Texas monkey warehouse (then owned by another company) in a monkey-smuggling scheme in which countless monkeys were abducted from their forest homes in Cambodia and illegally sold as captive-bred animals. Read more about the monkey-smuggling pipeline here.

“Whether you’re talking about beagles or monkeys, Envigo can’t be trusted to take care of animals or to safeguard public health. Monkeys brought in from squalid farms in Asia endure terrifying, grueling journeys and are harboring everything from Ebola-like viruses to tuberculosis. If an airline can’t be bothered to do the minimum of registering itself as required and Envigo doesn’t ensure that the carrier is legitimate, we have to ask whether they’re following any of the protocols required for public safety.”

—Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel, Senior Science Advisor, PETA

Although Hainan Airlines is out of the monkey trade, we need your help with another carrier: Please urge Ethiopian Airlines to stop sending monkeys to laboratories. It should join other industry leaders in prohibiting shipments of primates destined for laboratories and laboratory suppliers.

Then, contact the company on social media:

Original Post:

Chinese air carrier Hainan Airlines—which banned shipping monkeys to the U.S. a decade ago after discussions with PETA—has recently gone back on its word and shipped hundreds of monkeys to their deaths in U.S. laboratories. Let it know that its participation in the global monkey exploitation pipeline is unacceptable.

On August 9, Hainan Airlines shipped 720 sensitive, endangered long-tailed macaques—who were crammed into 144 wooden crates—from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to Beijing, China, (a 4.5-hour trip) and then to Chicago (a 13-hour flight). The monkeys were forced to sit in their own feces, urine, and blood and were terrified of what they might face next.

After arriving in Chicago, they were presumably packed into trucks and eventually taken to their final destination: a laboratory where they’ll be used for experimentation, facing torment and pain.

PETA U.S. has contacted Hainan’s executives to ask them to reconsider their involvement in this cruel industry and stop shipping monkeys to laboratories immediately. No ethical company should want its name to be associated with this vile and sordid trade.

Hainan Airlines: Stop Sending Monkeys to Laboratories!
While PETA U.S., our supporters, and the public have persuaded nearly every major airline in the world to stop transporting monkeys to laboratories, Hainan seems determined to continue this cruel trade with its shameful about-face in policy. In 2012 and again in 2013, its executives pledged to PETA that it would no longer ship monkeys destined for U.S. laboratories, adding that they “fully agree to the fundamental purposes of PETA and appreciate your great effort in the protection of animal rights.”

Every year, thousands of monkeys are transported to the U.S. to be imprisoned in laboratories and tormented in experiments in which they’re often cut open, poisoned, crippled, addicted to drugs, shocked, and killed. These sensitive individuals are bred in captivity on squalid factory farms. Their parents and grandparents were torn away from their families and homes in the wild and traumatized again when their own babies were snatched away from them on the breeding farms. The monkeys are crammed into small wooden crates and transported in the dark and terrifying cargo holds of planes. Once they arrive in the U.S., they wait in fear until they’re loaded into trucks and transported to infamous facilities like Covance (now part of Envigo).

Like all other primates, monkeys are highly social animals who live in tight-knit groups and use vocalizations, body language, and facial expressions to communicate with each other. In laboratories, they’re deprived of everything that’s natural and important to them.

Please urge Hainan Airlines to keep its promise and not send monkeys to laboratories or be involved in this cruel industry in any other way. The airline should stick by its word and join other industry leaders in prohibiting shipments of primates destined for laboratories and laboratory suppliers.