In response to Aymeric Caron and One Voice, Air France communicates the date on which it will stop transporting primates for animal experimentation
Press release for MEP Aymeric Caron together with One Voice on 12 December 2022
Six months after the announcement from Air France about putting a stop to taking part in transporting primates for laboratories following One Voice and its partners’ campaign, the company has responded to Aymeric Caron. From June 2023, primates will no longer pass through Air France’s baggage hold for animal testing. A wonderful victory for the associations and the REV [ Revolution for the Living] MEP.
Photo : “laboratory investigation”, family of monkeys at St Kitts waiting to be exported by Air France ©BUAV
The long-term campaign by One Voice (since 1996) and its partners Action for Primates (UK), Stop Camarles (Spain), and Peta (USA) for Air France to stop taking part in the transportation of primates to laboratories has finally paid off. It was one of the latest ‘national’ companies in Europe to continue to transport primates from countries where they live freely to those where they are experimented on on laboratory benches.
Animal testing is no longer allowed to be carried out on first generation (F1) primates within the European Union since November this year. However, breeding activity continues in Asia and Mauritius leaving the door open to potential illegal capturing.
Last June, in response to this campaign, Air France announced that they would stop transporting monkeys in the baggage hold of aeroplanes, ignoring the cut-off date in question. For months, the airline company refused to respond to animal defence associations.
In October, Aymeric Caron, a long-term activist for animal rights and from now on Paris’ MEP, wrote to the directors of the Air France-KLM group to get the ball rolling and to find out more about the date on which the airline company’s contracts with laboratories will actually come to an end. His approach has been a success.
In response to this letter, the DGA representative from Air France Cargo announced that the airline company’s contracts would end in June 2023 at the latest.
From this date, Air France will no longer transport monkeys from anywhere in the world (the island of Mauritius, Canada, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc.) to France and other countries for laboratories.
Aymeric Caron and the One Voice team very warmly thank the company, a jewel in France and worldwide, for its solid and concrete commitment to no longer take part in the trade of primates for laboratories. They are asking them to go further in extending their decision to other animal species, particularly dogs.
Translated from the French by Joely Justice