This is how monkeys are enslaved in Thailand for our coconut milk It’s Charles’ birthday: The king who divides

The PETA Report

Monkeys being chained, beaten and beaten: The photos recently published by the Asian branch of animal protection organization PETA are extremely ugly to see. According to PETA, these are images of a total of 57 coconut farms in Thailand. According to the animal protection organization, the monkeys are forced to pick coconuts for hours a day – coconuts collected for suppliers of the German company HelloFresh, among others. But even in Switzerland you can sometimes buy coconut milk from monkeys.

HelloFresh is a manufacturer of ready-to-eat meal kits and delivers them to customers’ homes. The company was founded in 2011 and has since expanded to numerous countries around the world. Since April 2016, HelloFresh also offers its service in Switzerland.

PETA spent eight months investigating the Thai coconut industry between December 2021 and July 2022. The organization has already published reports in the past about the sometimes desolate conditions in this branch of the economy.

Here is the summary of the report.

PETA’s Allegations

According to PETA’s research, monkeys in the wild are taken from their families when they are young and trained to pick coconuts in “monkey schools.” Several species of mistreated monkeys are in danger of extinction or even in danger of extinction. Macaques are especially common. After being “trained” in the facilities, they are sold to coconut industry companies and used there to harvest coconuts.

According to PETA, several intermediaries in the supply chains of major supermarket chains such as Suree and Aroy-D have confirmed that they use monkeys as “personnel.”

“Monkeys are chained around their necks and have to toil day in and day out, all for HelloFresh and other companies that are not industrious,” said Tracy Reiman, PETA vice president, in a statement accompanying the published report. We therefore urge both customers and companies like HelloFresh to stop buying coconut milk from Thailand immediately.

That’s what HelloFresh says

HelloFresh rejects the allegations against the American news portal CBS. They have written guarantees from the suppliers that the coconuts are not collected by monkey labor.

According to PETA, these guarantees are more of a PR measure than effective. The animal welfare organization’s report criticizes coconut farms and intermediaries as well as the Thai government in no way interested in real transparency about the origin of the products. The checks, hailed by the authorities as a “test system”, were mainly based on the coconut producers’ statements. And they wouldn’t mind just lying.

Written commitments, such as HelloFresh’s, don’t really seem to help the monkeys. PETA is therefore calling on people to avoid coconut milk if it comes from Thailand. This is in contrast to coconut water: Because this is usually extracted from coconuts that grow on dwarf trees, monkeys are largely not used to harvest these nuts. (against)