Experimenters Hold Meeting About PETA’s Air Cruelty Campaign

PETA’s Air Cruelty campaign has been so successful in stopping airlines from shipping primates to laboratories that the people who import, sell, and experiment on monkeys and other animals called a meeting to discuss the “increasing societal opposition to the domestic and international movement of these animals.”

The meeting, which was held yesterday in Washington, D.C., was available to watch via webcast and featured speakers from Covance and Charles River Laboratories—the two largest importers of primates to U.S. laboratories (importing 8,274 and 5,788 monkeys, respectively, in 2013). Other large animal-testing facilities that have gotten caught in PETA’s crosshairs were also in attendance—including Pfizer, Marshall BioResources, Harvard, and the University of Michigan.

But the meeting, which was being held in order to figure out what to do about animal activists, was interrupted … by animal activists.

Two people stood up during the meeting and walked to the front of the room holding signs that showed primates imprisoned in laboratories. They announced to the audience why we object to the shipping of primates: The animals are kidnapped from the wild, torn away from their homes and families, and crammed into tiny wooden crates in the cargo holds of passenger flights. They endure a dark and terrifying journey to the U.S., where they’re imprisoned, tormented, and likely killed in experiments.

The meeting’s attendees squirmed uncomfortably in their seats, and the organizers were seemingly too stunned to call security. After the activists had disrupted the meeting, they calmly walked out. Because of actions like these and “increasing societal opposition,” every major airline in the world has stopped shipping primates to laboratories, except for one: Air France. We can stop airlines from sending intelligent, social primates to their deaths. Sign PETA’s action alert, and keep the pressure on Air France.