Kategorie: Animals

Cost Plus World Market—which is owned by Union Township–based Bed Bath & Beyond—has banned Chaokoh coconut milk after the brand’s supplier was implicated in PETA Asia’s first-ever undercover investigation into the use of monkeys in Thailand’s coconut industry. The investigation reveals that monkeys are chained, confined to cramped cages, and forced to climb trees and pick coconuts to be used in products like coconut milk.

PETA Asia’s eyewitnesses visited four “monkey schools,” eight farms, and one coconut-picking competition, in which chained monkeys—reportedly illegally captured as babies—were forced to climb palm trees and pick coconuts for export around the world. When not being forced to pick coconuts, the animals were kept tethered, chained to old tires, or confined to cages barely larger than their bodies. At the facilities, monkeys displayed stereotypic repetitive behavior indicative of extreme stress. One monkey in a cage on a truck bed shook his cage repeatedly in a desperate, futile attempt to escape, and a screaming monkey on a rope frantically tried to run away from a handler. An investigator learned that if monkeys try to defend themselves, their canine teeth may be pulled out.

“These curious, highly intelligent animals are denied mental stimulation, companionship, freedom, and everything else that would make their lives worth living, all so that they can be used to pick coconuts,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA believes virtually all coconuts from Thailand are picked by abused monkeys and is calling on kind people to buy coconut products that are sourced elsewhere.”

Cost Plus World Market will stop selling Chaokoh products in its 276 stores nationwide as well as its online store. Walgreens Boots Alliance has agreed not to stock Aroy-D or Chaokoh products or sell any own-brand coconut food or drink products of Thai origin in its 9,277 Walgreens and 250 Duane Reade stores in the U.S. and its 2,758 Boots stores in the U.K and Thailand. Ahold Delhaize and its 2,000 U.S. store locations and distribution centers (including Giant Food, Food Lion, Stop & Shop, and Hannaford), as well as its 889 Albert Heijn stores in the Netherlands, have also committed to not stocking or selling any coconut products sourced from suppliers that use monkey labor.

Photos from the investigation are available here, and broadcast-quality footage is available upon request. PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.

 #

The post Monkey Labor Exposed: Cost Plus World Market Drops Leading Coconut Milk Brand appeared first on PETA.

The post Breaking: Monkeys Chained, Abused for Coconut Milk: A PETA Asia Investigation appeared first on PETA.

Are you strong enough to pull your own weight? How about doing so after someone tied you down, removed pieces of your skull, and implanted electrodes in your brain?

According to a shocking study, experimenters at Newcastle University forced monkeys to endure grueling physical strain before killing and dissecting them.

Experimenters subjected two female rhesus macaque monkeys—known as Monkey L and Monkey N—to “strength training” for up to three months. Five days a week, experimenters made the animals perform 50 repetitions of pulling a load weighing up to 14.3 pounds in trials lasting around 20 minutes. The animals only weighed approximately 13.2 to 14.3 pounds themselves. When experimenters forced them to pull the heaviest weights, this was equivalent to completing 50 one-arm pull-ups in 20 minutes.

This only scrapes the surface of the kinds of abuse these monkeys were subjected to. Both also underwent multiple invasive surgeries, including these:

• Headpieces were bolted to the monkeys’ skulls to keep them from moving their heads during the strength-training tasks.
• Electrodes were implanted in a muscle between the monkeys’ thumbs and index fingers, in three different forearm muscles, and in the bicep, tricep, chest, and shoulder muscles. The electrodes were sewn onto the muscles and wires were tunneled under the skin to connectors on the headpiece.
• Parts of the monkeys’ skulls were temporarily removed to expose their brains so that an additional six electrodes could be implanted.
• To “optimize” placement, experimenters looked for facial reactions and eye movement and listened for grunts while forcefully driving electrodes into the brains of the monkeys, meaning that the animals were conscious during this living nightmare.
• Experimenters implanted yet another electrode in Monkey L’s brain to stimulate the reward center so that they could electrically manipulate her brain. They sent signals that may have resulted in feelings akin to pleasure. This was used during the “strength training” to keep her motivated.
• The animal testers restricted food and fluids for the monkeys in order to get them to “work.”

At the end of miserable lives spent inside a laboratory far away from their forest home, these monkeys were killed and dissected.

They never knew what it’s like to swing from tree to tree with their loved ones, form relationships with their troop, or forage for food. They lived and died in captivity.

One of the co-authors of this study has a history of malfeasance: He was publicly criticized in 2013 for engaging in “ethics dumping” when he bypassed British law by flying to Nairobi to do deadly experiments on baboons stolen from their homes. According to reports, “Experiments on baboons and other primates caught in the wild are banned in Britain due to concerns about the suffering involved in trapping and transporting them.”

Experimenters torture and kill monkeys every day. Help PETA end tests like these.

Right now, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is spending taxpayers’ money to fund similar gruesome tests in which experimenters cut into monkeys’ heads, saw off a portion of their skulls to expose the brain, and then inject toxins into them to inflict permanent brain damage. Afterward, the experimenters terrify the monkeys with fake snakes and spiders.

Sounds ridiculous, right? These tests, conducted by Elisabeth Murray, have gone on for decades. Just like testing the effects of coronaviruses on monkeys, these tests have no value for humans. They’re simply ways to waste grants and other funding that could have been used for superior human-relevant scientific research.

Want to help monkeys? Using the link below, demand that NIH end these experiments.

The post Mutilated Monkeys Forced to Weightlift After Horrific Brain Surgery appeared first on PETA.

Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President of International Laboratory Methods Shalin Gala regarding the position by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that some experiments on dogs by the Department of Veterans Affairs are warranted:

Severing dogs’ spinal cords and implanting pacemakers in them does nothing to address military veterans’ real health needs. The Veterans Administration (VA) should address veterans’ needs by using the most advanced technology available, such as synthetically engineered human cardiac tissue and advanced computer models, not shamelessly wasting taxpayer dollars on abusing and killing dogs and other animals in misguided, flawed, and deadly experiments that don’t apply to humans because of significant physiological differences between species. Based on the National Academies’ recommendation that the VA “[d]evelop a strategic road map to incorporate … non-animal approaches, into its biomedical research,” we urge the agency to review PETA’s groundbreaking Research Modernization Deal, which articulates a scientific plan to do just that by advancing human health without harming animals and notes that the recognition of sentience in dogs and other species has played a role in the public’s growing opposition to animal experiments.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.

The post PETA Statement: Panel’s VA Dog Experiments Recommendation appeared first on PETA.

On June 13, after a 10-hour flight, a Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) plane touched down in Toronto. No one was prepared for the “horror show” found upon its arrival: Reportedly aboard the cargo plane were roughly 500 French bulldog puppies, 38 of them dead.

Many of the more than 400 survivors arrived dehydrated, vomiting, and weak, according to reports. “It was just a nightmare,” Abby Lorenzen, a bystander, told the CBC.

The puppies appeared to have been flown in crates, as seen in the footage above, and some of the crates were allegedly even shrink-wrapped. Temperatures in Kyiv—the city in Ukraine where the UIA flight departed from—were apparently approaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit on the day the dogs were loaded onto the plane.

‘38’ dogs found dead in a plane’s cargo hold and now this petition for an investigation. https://t.co/012OXNLSO9

— Paul Mueller (@RealPaulMueller) June 29, 2020

Millions of American dogs are euthanized every year, yet breed trends (like the narrow-minded obsession with “Frenchies”) are bringing in even more from overseas, adding to the deadly overpopulation problem.

This tragedy is far from an isolated incident—a month ago, amid the coronavirus lockdown, Love Island star Tommy Fury reportedly bought a Pomeranian puppy who died only a few days after arriving from Russia. According to the Daily Mail, the dog, named Mr. Chai, was a 21^st birthday gift to Fury’s costar and girlfriend, Molly-Mae Hague.

Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury slammed for importing puppy from RUSSIA amid the coronavirus pandemic https://t.co/yA3j8iLg37 pic.twitter.com/HzgKT9KjJK

— Goss.ie (@goss_ie) May 29, 2020

Despite the countless dogs in shelters (many of whom will be euthanized if not adopted), in March a California man decided to buy a dog as a gift for his 5-year-old daughter, reportedly paying $3,000 for a 12-week-old Yorkshire terrier. He had the puppy, named Sebastian, flown from a breeder in Ohio to the Los Angeles International Airport. When he arrived at the airport and opened the crate that Sebastian had been flown in, he discovered that the dog was dead.

Dog Found Dead After Delta Flight from Ohio to L.A. https://t.co/YdgGv1XIfi

— TMZ (@TMZ) February 29, 2020

French bulldogs, Pomeranians, Yorkshire terriers … these dogs don’t want to be exploited for some sick aesthetic obsession, but breeders don’t care. Dog breeders are only interested in their bottom line and will go to deadly lengths to produce these unnatural “designer” breeds, resulting in inherited health conditions that can be painful and fatal for dogs. French bulldogs like those aboard the UIA plane, for example, have a tendency to suffer from brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome—their breathing is obstructed because of the shape of their head and face.

Breeding dogs kills dogs. Flying dogs as “cargo” kills them, too. We know this.

There’s no excuse for supporting breeders, whether they’re your neighbors down the street or a big-time Ukrainian operation funneling dogs into Canada. There’s. No. Excuse. With millions of dogs—“purebreds” and mutts—already in need of homes, every puppy sold by a breeder means a lost opportunity for a dog waiting in a shelter for a family of their own.

We have an obligation to do what’s right for animals.

Please, never support breeders (adopt, don’t shop!), and never give a dog as a gift or choose one based on their status as a “purebred.” Find out more about ways breeding dogs is killing dogs and how the American Kennel Club shares the blame, and click below to do more for victims of the pet trade.

Pledge to Help End Animal Homelessness

The post Arrival of 500 Puppies—38 Reportedly Dead—in Canada Speaks to Bigger Issue appeared first on PETA.