Amazon’s New Air-Freight Partnership Prompts Appeal Over Primates

PETA Seeks Retail Giant’s Help in Asking Air Transport Services Group to Stop Shipping Monkeys to Laboratories

For Immediate Release:
April 11, 2016

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

In light of Amazon’s recently announced air-freight partnership with Air Transport Services Group (ATSG), PETA sent Amazon a letter this morning asking the company to urge ATSG to stop its subsidiary’s transport of nonhuman primates to laboratories, where animals are frequently imprisoned, cut open, poisoned, crippled, deprived of food and water, or infected with deadly diseases before being killed.

In its letter, PETA notes that ATSG subsidiary Air Transport International (ATI) is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for potential violations of the Animal Welfare Act. ATI has a history of problems with animal care and has already been cited for failure to provide monkeys on at least four flights with even a sip of water or a bite of food for more than 24 hours—and for using unsafe carriers that exposed the animals to potential contamination hazards. A USDA official also found a monkey in an enclosure with lacerations on his face and dried blood, among other violations.

“Amazon shouldn’t be part of this violent, deadly business, even indirectly,” says PETA Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on Amazon to encourage Air Transport Services Group and its subsidiary Air Transport International to join the vast majority of airlines in refusing to transport terrified monkeys to laboratories, where they suffer and die.”

Some monkeys who are shipped to laboratories come from squalid monkey farms overseas, while others are torn away from their homes and families in the wild. The animals are crammed into small wooden crates and transported inside dark cargo holds for as long as 30 hours before they reach their final—and deadly—destination.

Virtually all major airlines in the world—including other cargo carriers such as UPS, DHL, and FedEx—refuse to transport primates to laboratories.

PETA’s more than three million members and supporters are being encouraged to contact Amazon. For more information about that please click here.