Jane Goodall to Air France: Stop Shipping Monkeys to Their Deaths
Just days before her highly anticipated talk in Paris on May 14, world-renowned primate expert Dr. Jane Goodall, who recently turned 80, fired off an e-mail to Air France—the last remaining passenger airline to ship monkeys to laboratories for use in invasive and deadly experiments—urging the company to end its part in this “cruel trade.”
Dr. Goodall explains to Air France executives that in their natural homes, long-tailed monkeys—the species Air France most often ships to laboratories—form strong bonds, live in groups of up to 30 individuals, and “travel up to a mile a day playing, foraging for food and socializing with one another.” She further writes, “Babies are nursed by their mothers until they are more than a year old and females remain in the same social groups for life with their mothers, daughters, sisters and cousins. These social, intelligent primates can live to be more than 30 years old. Air France is unfortunately ensuring that they don’t get to experience any of this.”
Inside laboratories, monkeys are routinely locked alone in cages, poisoned, mutilated, starved, shocked, and infected with deadly diseases in what Dr. Goodall calls “dreadful experiments.” Earlier this year, China Southern Airlines agreed to stop shipping primates to laboratories, making Air France the only remaining airline in the world that continues to confine monkeys to crates and keep them inside dark cargo holds for up to 30 hours while transporting them to laboratories in the U.S. and Europe. Dr. Goodall joins a growing list of animal advocates—including, most recently, actor James Cromwell—who have called on Air France to do the right thing and stop giving monkeys a one-way ticket to a laboratory where they’ll be tortured and killed.
What You Can Do
Please speak up for monkeys: Tell Air France officials that you won’t fly while animals die.
