Pamela Anderson is urging China Southern Airlines to stop sending monkeys to laboratories.
On a recent visit to Auckland, the former model, who rose to fame for her Baywatch role, saw a China Southern Airlines plane at the Auckland airport and got curious.
“I spotted a China Southern plane when I flew into Auckland Airport earlier this week and couldn’t help but wonder whether any terrified monkeys were on board,” Pamela wrote in a letter to Tan Wangeng, President of the airline.
According to a statement issued by PETA (People for Ethical Treatment for Animals), China Southern Airlines is one of only two major airlines in the world that still ships monkeys to laboratories. Pamela has requested Tan to “have a heart for animals this Valentine’s Day and stop shipping monkeys to their deaths in laboratories.”
Untill then, Pamela has decided to boycott the airline and has appealed to her fans to do the same.
The letter went on to describe the torture these monkeys face. “You may not be aware that after being torn from the wild or rounded up at dreadful breeding farms, the monkeys you ship from China to laboratories in the U.S. and elsewhere end up
imprisoned in tiny, desolate laboratory cages, where they are cut open, addicted to drugs, infected with debilitating diseases, intentionally poisoned, and crippled in cruel experiments.
“They are driven insane by constant terror, pain, loneliness, and boredom. When they’re no longer useful to experimenters, they’re killed. This abuse is only possible as long as airlines such as China Southern are willing to ship monkeys in order to keep the cages full at these deadly destinations.”
According to Gateway To Hell, a charity working for animal rights, the airline was fined $15,000 in September 2012 by the USDA for eight violations of the Animal Welfare Act that led to the deaths of 17 primates they were transporting.
China Southern Airlines left a shipment of 25 primates in their shipping crates for five days without food or water, including leaving them for 60 hours in direct sunlight. The animals resorted to cannibalism in order to survive.
As many as 100 million animals are used in “cruel and unscientific experiments” each year – an exact number is not known since very few countries require that scientists keep any record of the animals they experiment upon, says Gateway To Hell.
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