A long-tailed macaque is flying through the air. Sadly, he is not leaping between trees in the wild but is in a box in the cargo hold of an airplane. When he arrives at his destination, he will be sent to a research lab where he will be restrained and, in all likelihood, force-fed or injected with drugs or chemicals to see what they do to him.
He isn’t alone in the cargo bay; there are other monkeys, possibly beagles, rabbits, and rats—some of the animals most commonly imported for use in British laboratories. And now, animal advocates are targeting one of the industries that enables animal experimentation: aviation.
“Like other notorious trades in lives that have gone before it, animal testing relies on the complicity of transportation interests—in this case, airlines, airports, haulage firms, and insurance companies—to keep the wheels turning,” says Jane Smith, the UK’s…
