PETA and a slew of animal rights organizations are calling for a federal investigation into credible allegations that Bluebird Nordic airline isn’t offering lab-bound monkeys with meals or water throughout air shipping after which mendacity on bureaucracy to hide it up.
After receiving the tips from whistleblowers, PETA—at the side of Abolición Vivisección, Motion for Primates, Cheshire Animal Rights Campaigns, and One Voice—despatched a letter calling for an investigation by means of the U.S. Division of Agriculture.
If the allegations are true, Bluebird Nordic, which is without doubt one of the few airways nonetheless prepared to move primates to laboratories, is violating federal animal welfare regulations and rules with each cargo of monkeys it carries—and more than one occasions for each and every flight, which normally lasts round 35 hours.
For shipping of that period, federal legislation calls for Bluebird Nordic to provide meals at least one time to monkeys greater than a 12 months outdated and a minimum of two times to monkeys not up to a 12 months outdated, along with providing they all water each 12 hours.
That comes with Bluebird Nordic’s flight BO317 on September 15, which departed from the island country of Mauritius—off the southeastern coast of Africa—and used to be reportedly transporting long-tailed macaques destined for Charles River Laboratories.
The flight made a complete of 5 stops: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Brussels; Keflavik, Iceland; Boston; and Houston. The ordeal lasted over 35 hours, no longer together with the loading and unloading time. PETA won knowledge that the cargo contained 147 crates of monkeys, a most probably general of a number of hundred terrified and struggling people.
An October 20 cargo at the similar aircraft required 4 stops after departing Hanoi, Vietnam: Delhi, India; Tbilisi, Georgia; Reykjavík, Iceland; and Washington, D.C. In line with paperwork received by means of PETA, this cargo contained 720 long-tailed macaques exported from Thanh Cong Organic Creature Co. and imported by means of Charles River Laboratories.
On December 9, a cargo from Hanoi arrived in Houston after greater than 38 hours and 5 stops.
And if Bluebird Nordic isn’t offering the monkeys with meals and water, it’s a secure guess that it’s additionally no longer watching them each 4 hours or at each and every refueling forestall as rules require.
It’s in particular regarding that Bluebird Nordic isn’t checking at the monkeys it transports, given the numerous build up within the choice of showed tuberculosis (TB) circumstances amongst them on shipments from each Mauritius and Southeast Asia. And the U.S. Facilities for Illness Keep an eye on and Prevention (CDC) doesn’t require any trying out for illness ahead of the animals are stuffed into shipment holds certain for U.S. laboratories.
In January, greater than two dozen long-tailed macaques imported from Southeast Asia have been discovered to be inflamed with a pressure of TB that had by no means been noticed ahead of in animals within the U.S.
Monkeys torn clear of their woodland properties in Mauritius have been transported into the U.S. and quarantined beneath CDC regulations—after which exited CDC quarantine inflamed with TB. They have been then trucked around the nation, in the long run triggering a reportable illness outbreak in Michigan this 12 months after laboratory staff have been uncovered to inflamed animals.
Jamming stressed out, immunocompromised monkeys from spaces with recognized circumstances of TB into an plane for 35 hours amplifies the well being chance no longer just for them but in addition for the entire different monkeys and people they stumble upon each and every step of the best way on their hellish commute to laboratories.
What You Can Do
Please TAKE ACTION lately and urge Bluebird Nordic to forestall transport monkeys to laboratories: