Victory! HelloFresh Says Goodbye to Coconut Milk Tied to Thai Monkey Labour Following PETA Asia Investigation 

Bangkok – International meal service company HelloFresh, which operates in 15 countries, including the US, Germany, and Japan – has confirmed that it will stop obtaining 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. PETA shared the findings of the investigation with the meal-kit company, which also received nearly 100,000 e-mails from members and supporters of PETA entities worldwide pushing for the change – and it has told members of the public that it will stop using Thai coconut milk no later than mid-2023. 

“HelloFresh’s decision will help protect monkeys from being kidnapped, chained, and whipped in the coconut trade,” says PETA Senior Vice President Jason Baker. “HelloFresh is helping PETA push the Thai coconut industry and government away from using and abusing monkeys.” 

Coconut suppliers of Aroy-D and Suree, used by HelloFresh, showed PETA Asia investigators where monkeys were being used to pick coconuts, and at a supplier to Suree, monkeys were chained on trash-strewn patches of dirt and flooded areas surrounded by old car tires. One worker told investigators that the monkeys would be forced to pick coconuts for more than a decade and would then spend the rest of their lives chained. 

PETA Asia’s investigation – its third into Thailand’s forced monkey labour industry – also documented 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. 

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 Asia’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETAAsia.com or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. 

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