HelloFresh drops Thai coconut milk after PETA monkey labor campaign

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The meal kit provider HelloFresh has said it will no longer sell coconut milk sourced from Thailand, after campaigning by an animal rights group that accused coconut farms in the country of using monkey labour.

The company confirmed to Axios that it does not tolerate “any form of animal abuse in our supply chain” and “out of an abundance of caution” will not be placing orders for coconut milk from Thailand. HelloFresh has not yet responded to the Guardian’s request for comment.

Several companies have stopped selling some Thai coconut products over recent years after campaigning by Peta, which said that it had investigated Thai coconut farms and found chained monkeys that were forced to spend long hours climbing trees and picking coconut. Abuse of primates was “rampant”, the group has said.

The Thai government has rejected the Peta’s claims of widespread abuse, saying the traditional practice of using monkeys to harvest coconuts is almost nonexistent in industry, which, due to its scale, instead depends upon human labour and machinery.

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A recent study co-authored by Nijman found that the needs of the pig-tailed macaques kept for coconut-harvesting – such as the ability to move freely and unrestrained, and to hide from stressors – were largely not met in such contexts.

It is probably the case that such monkeys are based on small farms catering to local consumption, he said, rather than farms that produce coconuts for exports.

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