Airline cuts ties with cruel primate trade
After our joint campaign with Action for Primates and Animal Rights Florida Foundation (ARFF), Skybus Jet Cargo, chose not to get involved in the cruel primate trade.
In May 2020, Action for Primates joined with Animal Rights Florida Foundation (ARFF) and One Voice to alert our supporters about a pending shipment of monkeys from Mauritius to the US. As many as 1,200 monkeys were to be exported for use in experiments or toxicity (poisoning) testing. We urged people to ask Skybus Jet Cargo, who had been hired to fly the monkeys on the extremely long journey, to reject the shipment. The response we received to our action alert from people around te world was overwhelming, demonstrating the widespread public concern there is on this issue. However, despite this Skybus did not respond to our concerns, so we feared that the shipment had gone ahead as planned.
This week, we learned of a breach of contract lawsuit filed against Skybus Jet Cargo by a company called International Logistics Support. When we read the complaint, it was clear that the lawsuit was about the shipment of monkeys in our action alert.
Skybus Jet Cargo apparently had cancelled the shipment, in part because of “certain political activist organizations“. On behalf of the monkeys, we are happy that Skybus chose not to get involved in the cruel primate trade.
The surprise victory reminds us of a quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.” We are grateful to everyone who contacted Skybus Jet Cargo in response to our action alert!
The court files also revealed that Matthew Block, an infamous US primate dealer, is an owner of International Logistics Support. Matthew Block, founder of Worldwide Primates, has a felony conviction from 1993 for smuggling orangutans, known as the ‘The Bangkok Six’ case, that left three orangutans dead.
Further, in 2018, it was reported that Block pleaded guilty to a federal charge of intentionally conveying false information through the mail, in an attempt to frame animal campaigners in Florida. Block accepted five years of probation and agreed to pay $14,872 for the cost of the police investigation.