Photos: Chained PETA ‘Monkeys’ Dump Coconuts at Whole Foods Over Ties to Forced Labour
1 May 2024
Photos: Chained PETA ‘Monkeys’ Dump Coconuts at Whole Foods Over Ties to Forced Labour
London – Today, three PETA “monkeys” in prisoner garb dumped wheelbarrows of humanely picked coconuts outside the Whole Foods Market store on Kensington High Street to slam the supermarket giant for continuing to sell coconut milk from Thailand while knowing full well that the country’s coconut industry is driven by the forced labour of pig-tailed macaques. Activists also held signs reading, “Whole Foods Sells Coconut Milk From Cruel Monkey Labour” and “Choose Only Non-Thai Coconut Milk.”
Photos are also available here.
“Whole Foods is complicit in the abuse of monkeys and wilfully propping up an industry that kidnaps sentient beings, chains them, and treats them as nothing more than coconut-picking machines,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “PETA is calling on Whole Foods to live up to its values and sell coconut milk only from countries where monkey labour isn’t used, including India, Indonesia, and the Philippines.”
Even though Thai government officials have claimed that forced monkey labour has ended, PETA Asia’s third investigation into Thailand’s coconut industry recorded workers confirming that monkeys are abducted as babies from their families and forest homes. The animals are tethered by the neck and deprived of any semblance of a natural life, and their teeth may be pulled out if they try to defend themselves. PETA Asia’s investigators found that when the monkeys aren’t being forced to pick coconuts or perform in cruel, circus-style shows for tourists, they’re kept chained to old tyres or boxes.
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.uk or follow the group on X, Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]
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