Kenya Airways, which has transported hundreds of monkeys from a Mauritius breeding farm to the U.S. to be used in laboratory experiments, has committed to ending this practice after its current contract expires next month.
The airline’s decision came just 24 hours after PETA contacted CEO Allan Kilavuka and Chair Michael Joseph urging them to consider what monkeys subjected to the long flight and then torment and death in laboratories endure.
The monkeys, whose crates spilled out onto a highway in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, the United States on Friday (1/28) following a truck crash, were flown on a Kenya Airways plane that had landed in New York City earlier that day.
In his e-mail to PETA, Joseph wrote, “[T]he current contract for the transport of the Macaques (captive bred for export) will not be renewed when it expires at the end of February.”
“PETA would like to thank Mr. Kilavuka and Mr. Joseph for their decision to do away with this cruel, heinous business at Kenya Airways. Monkeys belong in the wild, not in laboratories, where their most basic needs, including home, family, and community, are better met,” says PETA Senior Vice-President Jason Baker, adding, “By making this decision, Kenya Airways also demonstrates their understanding of how using monkeys—or indeed any other animals—for research purposes poses higher risks to the possibility of emerging infectious diseases.”
PETA points out the use of animals in experiments is failing to provide treatments and cures for humans.
Studies show that 95% of new medications that test safe and effective on animals fail in human clinical trials.
PETA scientists have developed the Research Modernization Deal, which provides a commonsense strategy for ending the use of animals and improving biomedical research. Importing monkeys for experimentation is carried out with almost no oversight.
Monkeys arrive by plane from Asia or Africa after enduring sometimes days-long trips as they sit in their own urine and feces.
They’re trucked to undisclosed quarantine sites before being sent to laboratories across the United States.
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