The airline Egyptair has stopped transporting monkeys from Africa and Asia to vivisection laboratories around the world. The animal rights organisation PETA started an intensive campaign three months ago, which included 100,000 people sending e-mails to the airline complaining of the fact they were one of the few commercial airlines that still transported primates for vivisection. PETA entities held dozens of protests around the world in Frankfurt, Manila, Paris, New York and London. Other organizations, including Action for Primates in the U.K., Stop Camarles in Spain, and One Voice in France, also campaigned to end the shipments.
On 8th August 2022, officials from Egyptair sent an e-mail to PETA US announcing that given the airline’s support of “the vision and mission” of animal protection organizations, it will no longer transport monkeys to laboratories.
The campaign started when PETA found out that 720 macaques were flown by Egyptair from Cambodia to New York on 30th April 2022. Records show that the airline has flown 5,000 monkeys into the US since March. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had upped the classification of long-tailed macaques, one of the species of primates that Egyptair was transporting, from “vulnerable” to “endangered”, which must have helped the airline to realise that by participating in the international monkey trade they were driving these monkeys toward extinction.
In January, Kenya Airways ended its transport of monkeys to laboratories, and in June, Air France banned the practice after a decade-long campaign. One by one, each airline is realising that they should not be part of this cruel activity. In 2005, British Airways decided to stop transporting animals bound for scientific experimentation. United Airlines followed suit in 2013. American Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Northwest Airlines, Qantas Airways, South African Airways, Delta Airlines, Eva Air, and China Airlines, all banned transporting primates for vivisection.
