MASSIVE VICTORY! Air France has announced that it’s ending the transport of monkeys to laboratories! This decision follows years of pressure from PETA U.S., our grassroots supporters, and international PETA entities as well as groups in France and other grassroots activists worldwide. Now let’s get EGYPTAIR to do the same. Take action!

Update (June 30, 2022): Air France has announced that it’s ending the transport of monkeys to laboratories! This decision follows years of pressure from PETA U.S., our grassroots supporters, and international PETA entities as well as groups in France and other grassroots activists worldwide.

Originally published on November 26, 2014

Air France used to claim to be “making the sky the best place on Earth”—all while it was making the sky a dangerous and scary place, as one of the largest transporters of primates in the world. Even though nearly every other major airline has stopped sending monkeys on these horrific one-way flights, Air France continues to ship them to laboratories.

Transporting stressed and potentially immunocompromised monkeys is dangerous and poses a serious risk to public health. They’re poor models of disease in humans, anyway, as experiments on monkeys have failed to lead to cures and treatments for human diseases. The makers of both the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines stated that animals other than humans aren’t good models for COVID-19 vaccine testing because the disease behaves differently in nonhuman species. PETA is urging Air France to stop flying monkeys to laboratories for pointless and deadly studies.

The monkeys Air France ships are bred in captivity on squalid factory farms or torn away from their homes and families in nature. Crammed into small wooden crates in the cargo holds on passenger and cargo flights, they endure a dark and terrifying journey. Upon arriving in the U.S., the animals are transported to dealers like Primate Products and to laboratories—including Charles River Laboratories and Covance, some of the largest importers of monkeys in the U.S.—where they’re stripped of their individuality, imprisoned in cages, and tormented in experiments.

Almost every other major airline in the world refuses to transport monkeys to laboratories. Air France needs to get on board with what the rest of the airline industry already knows: Cruelty doesn’t fly.