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Today we’re celebrating a huge victory: The 365 by Whole Foods Market brand coconut milk supplier no longer abuses monkeys through forced labor!
Whole Foods failed to take action to eliminate the cruel monkey labor from its supply chain, but our investigators and negotiators worked tirelessly to get rid of it.
Whole Foods Didn’t Lift a Finger to Help Monkeys
In January 2024, we sent Whole Foods evidence that endangered pig-tailed macaques were being illegally kidnapped from the wild, kept chained up, and abusively trained to produce its store-brand 365 coconut milk, but it didn’t respond to any of our pleas to fix its supply chain.
In the face of Whole Foods’ callous disregard for these monkeys’ suffering, PETA launched a massive campaign—which included four damning PETA exposés, dozens of demonstrations across the U.S., creative advertising campaigns, hundreds of phone calls, a heartfelt plea from singer Morrissey, and e-mails from more than 100,000 concerned consumers.
Investigation: PETA and Entities Did Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel’s Job for Him
Since Whole Foods remained unresponsive, PETA Asia took matters into its own hands. It identified Merit Food Products as the supplier of Whole Foods’ 365 brand coconut milk and found that this supplier sourced some of its coconuts from third-party farms in Thailand that were using monkey labor.
Video: The Thai Government Covers Up Forced Monkey Labor
Sure enough, when PETA Asia’s investigators visited the Thai third-party farm that supplied Merit Food Products, they found rampant monkey abuse.
Whole Foods once again failed to act on PETA Asia’s evidence, so PETA’s own investigators and negotiators went straight to Merit Food Products. The company was eager to help monkeys, so we worked together to remove monkey labor from its supply chain, and it committed to sourcing third-party coconuts only from countries that don’t use monkey labor.
Urge Thai Officials to End Monkey Labor!
Now that Whole Foods’ 365 brand coconut milk is free of monkey labor, we’re demanding that Thai officials take immediate action for the countless monkeys who are suffering in Thailand, including by doing the following:
- Closing all “monkey-training schools”
- Making it illegal to breed or sell monkeys
- Investing in a law-enforcement team to end the illegal capture of monkeys from the wild
- Developing a plan to retire monkeys currently used by the coconut industry
- Replacing all tall-tree varieties with shorter ones and offering picking poles free of charge to coconut farmers
Please help us put an end to monkey labor by urging the Thai government to make it illegal and to shut down “monkey-training schools”:
When Thailand finally ends its rampant abuse of monkeys, it will regain the trust of socially conscious importers and consumers, who are dropping Thai coconut milk in record numbers.
