MONKEYS are still being enslaved by cruel coconut farmers who make them work in chains to meet the growing demand for trendy vegan milk.
The primates are forced to harvest hundreds of coconuts each day in Thailand, under the watchful eye of their handlers.
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The monkeys are made to spend countless hours picking the fruit when they’re not chained to the floor, The Times reported.
The farmers reportedly pull on ropes that are tied around the animal to control them while they carry out their gruelling shifts in the treetops.
But despite a three-year-long campaign by animal rights charity Peta in 2019 – some farms in Thailand have continued to force the monkeys into labour.
The innocent animals are either bred in captivity or robbed from their mothers in the jungle when they are babies.
Past footage from the charity has revealed the dark secrets behind the monkey labour industry and has also highlighted the tortures they experience while in captivity.
Handlers have been seen using methods of intimidation and brutal punishment to train the macaques including whipping the animals and dangling them by their necks.
But the horrors don’t stop there – according to Peta, the creature’s sharp front teeth are often removed to stop them from biting themselves or the farmers.
And this nightmare continues to unfold for the monkeys as the demand for vegan milk climbs.
With Thailand being one of the world’s largest manufacturers of coconut milk – Peta has warned that the source of some coconut-based products such as milk, oil and flour could have likely been partly produced by “slave monkeys”.
The charity has now called for a boycott of all Thai-made coconut products as monkeys continue to be used for free labour.
HelloFresh, the world’s most popular meal-kit provider, recently became the latest international business to drop Thai coconut milk altogether.
In Thailand, poachers steal the young primates by luring them into traps or murdering their mothers – and according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “red list”, the two breeds of monkeys used on coconut farms have been deemed “vulnerable” and “endangered”.
As monkeys are sociable, wild animals, it is not just the physical labour that impacts their life.
According to Peta, the lack of contact with their social groups can cause them extreme mental anguish and depression.
“Driven to desperation, they pace and circle endlessly on the barren, trash-strewn patches of dirt where they’re chained,” the charity said in a report.
But not everyone has agreed that the slavery of monkeys should be banned – including some elite Thai politicians and industry figures.
They have argued that using primate labour in this way is similar to the use of other animals across the globe – such as camels and elephants.
Government officials in Thailand have even claimed that coconut-picking is natural for macaques and argued that the practice is a cultural tradition, according to The Times.
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