Performance Food Group
has confirmed that it will stop sourcing coconut milk from
Thailand
following a PETA Asia investigation revealing that monkeys are chained, whipped, beaten, and forced to spend long hours picking coconuts from trees. In thanks, PETA is sending the locally based food distribution companywhich has more than 150 centers nationwidedelicious monkey-shaped vegan chocolates.
"
Performance Food Group's
decision will help prevent monkeys from being kidnapped and sold as coconut-picking machines," says PETA Executive Vice President
Tracy Reiman
. "By cutting ties with Thai coconut suppliers, leaders like
Performance Food Group
are helping PETA push the industry away from using and abusing monkeys, who belong in nature with their families."
PETA Asia's investigationits third into
Thailand's
forced monkey labor industrydocumented that a worker struck a screaming monkey, dangled him by the neck, and then whipped him with the tether. A female monkey reportedly used for breeding was kept chained alone in the sun without access to water, while other young monkeys languished in cages. Coconut pickers said that the monkeys sometimes incur broken bones from falling out of trees or being yanked by their tethers, and a worker confirmed that most of the monkeys were kidnapped from their families in nature, even though the species exploited by the coconut trade are threatened or endangered.
Performance Food Group
joins HelloFresh in rejecting coconut products from
Thailand
due to cruel monkey labor, and PETA is rallying the public to demand that
Whole Foods
follow suit.
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, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
