Thai Monkey-Abuse Exposé Prompts International Support of Philippine Coconut Industry 

Manila — This week, two international companies—British grocery retailer ASDA and meal service company HelloFresh—confirmed that they will stop obtaining coconut milk from Thailand following a PETA investigation revealing that monkeys are chained, whipped, beaten, and forced to spend long hours picking coconuts from trees. ASDA’s own new range of coconut milk will be obtained from the Philippines. 

Photos from the investigation are available here, and video footage is available here. Broadcast-quality footage is available upon request. 

PETA Asia’s third exposé implicates Thai coconut pickers, brokers, farms, and monkey-training operations in nine provinces, including top-producing ones. One trainer was caught on camera dangling a screaming monkey by the neck and striking him with a tether. One monkey used for breeding was kept chained alone in the sun without access to water, while other young monkeys languished in cramped cages. Coconut pickers said that the monkeys sometimes incur broken bones from falling out of—or being yanked down from—the trees, and a worker confirmed that most monkeys are kidnapped from their families in nature, even though the species exploited by the coconut trade are threatened or endangered. 

“These companies’ compassionate decisions will help protect monkeys from being kidnapped, chained, and forced to pick coconuts,” says PETA Senior Vice President Jason Baker. “PETA is calling on consumers and companies alike to steer clear of Thai coconut milk and support coconut producers that never use monkey labor, including those in the Philippines.”  

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETAAsia.com or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. 

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