Air Canada recently shipped 48 lab monkeys in cramped wooden crates from China to Toronto. According to a tipster, after the long flight in the cold cargo hold, the monkeys languished at the airport for more than 15 hours before a truck came to transport them to a research lab in Quebec.

Air Canada is one of the few airlines that will transport lab monkeys internationally. Delta Air Lines, Qantas Airways, United Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Virgin Atlantic and many others have already stopped this practice. British Airways has a policy that it will not carry any live animals “for use in any laboratory, or for experimentation or exploitation.”

Calin Rovinescu, the president and CEO of Air Canada, says his company must continue to transport the animals due to a 1998 ruling by the Canada Transportation Agency (CTA), which said that as long as the monkeys weren’t a nuisance to passengers, they could continue to be shipped. The CTA said the argument that the practice is inhumane and immoral was not a valid reason to ban it.

However, in 2007 Air Canada ignored the ruling and banned the tranportation of beagles used for medical research -- because passengers had complained about all the yelping coming from the cargo hold.

It's time to extend that ban to include all lab animals. Please sign the petition urging the president of Air Canada to end the transportation of animals destined for research laboratories.

Photo credit: Eric Kilby