BANGKOK, 7 September 2022: Samui Island’s monkeys trained to harvest coconuts could be heading for early retirement, according to PETA Asia’s campaign that prompted Thailand’s Department of Agriculture to design and build a coconut harvester tool.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Asia’s senior vice president Jason Baker released a media statement on Tuesday saying the non-government organisation is hopeful that a tool developed by the Department of Agriculture will make the monkeys redundant.
“PETA is hopeful that the machine developed by the Department of Agriculture will lead to the retirement of the monkeys. They are captured, chained, and forced to pick coconuts in Thailand’s coconut industry.
“Workers in India and Sri Lanka have been using similar contraptions to climb tall coconut trees even before PETA started our campaign, but anything that the Thai government and the coconut industry can do to replace monkeys is a welcome step in the right direction.
“Suffering monkeys remain an inherent part of Thailand’s coconut industry, and a lot more work needs to be done if the country doesn’t want to see its coconuts shunned in favour of animal-friendly alternatives, as happened with Indonesian palm oil.”
According to a recent Nation Online news, PETA released a report two years ago that pointed the finger at coconut farmers in Thailand, alleging the monkeys were ill-treated.
The Agriculture Department has been designing and building a machine tool to end the practice, and three factories are manufacturing the devices.
(Source: PETA)
