The Best Meal Kit Company Using Monkey Labor For Its Food?
A PETA investigation revealed that Hello Fresh is using monkeys as slave labor at one of their coconut milk production facilities, where the animals are being subjected to abhorrent and inhumane conditions.
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Just when you think you’ve heard and seen it all in this wild world and then you get asked to report on a developing situation out of Thailand in which monkeys are being enslaved and forced to be the muscle in the production of canned coconut milk. Yes, this is a real and appalling development that’s hard to believe is actually true. Before reading this article it’s advisable to take a deep breath and buckle your seatbelt because the overarching company responsible for these atrocities is none other than Hello Fresh.
A PETA investigation uncovered 57 HelloFresh coconut milk product suppliers in Thailand that all had monkeys that were doing all the grunt work in the operation. These animals were made to work in an environment that was described as incredibly dangerous. The conditions were also abhorrently unsanitary.
In modern times, you would think we would have moved on from using animals to further our financial objectives. Who are we kidding; humanity has been utilizing animals and mistreating them for free labor for tens of thousands of years. Remember the ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman civilizations used horses, cows, donkeys, mules, birds, and just about any animal that they could capture and convert into a productive worker.
But it’s 2022 that type of abuse doesn’t happen anymore and especially not in the United States with a widely-known company like Hello Fresh. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but you don’t have to look further than this Christmas with all the horse-drawn carriages rolling around town.
Then, of course, you have sled dogs in Alaska that must push themselves in some of the most grueling conditions for many more hours than a human would be able to run at top speed. Subjectively speaking, the US should not be so quickly absolved from practicing some degree of free animal labor. And don’t forget all the service animals that are raised from birth to work for us in some capacity or the drug and bomb-sniffing dogs.
That said what’s happening at Hello Fresh’s facilities in Thailand takes animal labor to a disturbing level. Usually, a situation like this must be exposed to the world which then leads to it being the right time to start conversations about what the proper protocol for utilizing animals as labor would look like.
When PETA went to visit these 57 locations, they witnessed Hello Fresh suppliers utilizing chains tightly around the monkey’s necks and being forced to toil all day and night in the heat with no water being provided. Under the current conditions, those animals are being viewed as expendable to the company with no regard for the monkeys’ well-being and all to turn a few more cents of profit by the corporate machine.
According to The Byte HelloFresh released a statement to Yahoo, “HelloFresh strictly condemns any use of monkey labor in its supply chain and we take a hard position of not procuring from suppliers or selling coconut products which have been found to use monkey labor,” a spokesperson said. “We have written confirmation from all of our suppliers globally that they do not engage in these practices.”
PETA is asking consumers to boycott any coconut milk produced in Thailand to levy some economic repercussions for their transgressions. Humans have always utilized the tools they had available to them to forward the needs of their society, there is nothing wrong with that approach. However, working an animal to death and then punting them over a fence and replacing them immediately in the production line, that type of human behavior needs to have some consequences.
