Chef’s Choice Foods Ditches Coconuts Tied to Monkey Labor After PETA Appeal

Bangkok — In a historic move, Thailand-based Chef’s Choice Foods has confirmed that it no longer obtains coconuts from its home country following a PETA investigation revealing that monkeys are chained, whipped, beaten, and forced to spend long hours picking coconuts from trees. Chef’s Choice Foods is the maker of the popular coconut milk brand Nature’s Charm, which is sold in more than 60 countries on six continents, including by major chains in the US (Kroger and Sam’s Club) and Japan (MaxValu), and it has an annual revenue of US$29.7 million and employs 537 people in Thailand.

“Even a Thai-based business knows there’s no way to ensure that supply chains in Thailand, where monkeys are threatened with violence and forced to work as coconut-picking machines, are free of monkey labor,” says PETA Asia Senior Vice President Jason Baker. “PETA applauds Chef’s Choice Foods for taking action to ensure that monkeys aren’t abused for its coconut milk and urges other Thai coconut milk producers to follow its lead.”

PETA’s investigation—its third into Thailand’s forced monkey labor industry—documented that a worker struck a screaming monkey, dangled him by the neck, and then whipped him with the tether. A female monkey reportedly used for breeding was kept chained alone in the sun without access to water, while other young monkeys languished in cages. Coconut pickers said that the monkeys sometimes sustain broken bones from falling out of trees or being yanked by their tethers, and workers confirmed that most of the monkeys were kidnapped from their families in nature, even though the species exploited by the coconut trade are threatened or endangered.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETAAsia.com or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

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