Monkey Slave Labor Used For Coconut Milk Denounced By PETA

ACROSS FLORIDA — Publix CEO Todd Jones will receive a special delivery from PETA this week in the hopes of convincing the grocery store chain to stop selling coconut milk supplied by the Thai company, Chaokoh.

PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said Jones will be among the CEOs who will receive a bunch of fresh, humanely picked coconuts to remind them that selling products obtained through forced monkey labor is "coco-nuts."

According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Lakeland, Florida, grocery store chain is among a handful of holdouts in PETA's campaign to convince 25,000 store chains around the world — including Walgreens, Giant and Food Lion — to stop selling coconut milk sold by Chaokoh.

According to PETA, the coconut milk supplier uses coconuts gathered by monkeys that are "chained in barren environments, separated from their peers, driven insane and forced to climb trees to pick coconuts."

"It seems that monkeys used in the coconut industry are illegally captured in their natural habitat as babies," said Newkirk. "Then they endure abusive training. Investigators visited 'monkey schools,' which exploit the animals to entertain visitors through tricks such as riding bicycles and shooting basketballs. Coercion is used to train them to pick coconuts, as they wouldn’t voluntarily do it."

Newkirk said the captive animals displayed behaviors indicating abuse, such as circling endlessly. Similar abuse was found at all 13 randomly selected locations from which Chaokoh purchases coconuts.

According to World Animals Voice, many of the monkeys working in the Thai coconut industry are illegally abducted from their homes in nature when they’re just babies. They’re fitted with rigid metal collars and kept chained or tethered 24 hours a day.

Male primates can harvest up to 1,600 coconuts a day and females about 600 a day.

Humans can only harvest 80 coconuts a day and monkeys can't demand fair wages or walk off the job, said the nonprofit animal rights group. Monkeys that refuse to cooperate are flogged.

Grocery stores throughout the world pledged to stop selling the coconut milk after PETA did an expose on the monkey labor practice in the Thai coconut industry.

"Coconuts are sweet, but the ways in which monkeys in Thailand are deprived and exploited to pick them is anything but," said Newkirk. "Smart, sensitive primates don't deserve to be subjected to bitter lives of forced labor."

The group is also sending coconuts and letters to the CEOs of Save Mart and Wegmans to ask them to reconsider their business relationship with Chaokoh.

In general, coconut products originating in Brazil, Colombia, Hawaii, India and the Philippines are supplied by companies that don’t use monkey labor.

PETA has also launched a petition drive as well to convince Chaokoh to use more humane practices for gathering coconuts.

While not all Chaokoh suppliers use monkeys some do as documented in PETA Asia’s investigation. Chaokoh has not responded to PETA's investigation, Brooke Rossi, media coordinator said.

Patch has requested a comment from Publix and will update this story with Pubix' response.