Brandbrief BinAir: stop de apenhandel

Omdat nog maar weinig respectabele luchtvaartmaatschappijen hun handen willen branden aan de onethische praktijk van proefdierentransport, kwam Hartelust terecht bij de Duitsers van BinAir met een verre van vlekkeloos verleden:

• Op 19 januari 2010 raakte een BinAir Swearingen SA-227-DC Metro beschadigd toen het rechter hoofdonderstel instortte bij de landing op de luchthaven van Stuttgart.

• De Europese Unie waarschuwde de luchtvaartmaatschappij in 2011 om haar veiligheid te verbeteren, anders zou ze worden opgenomen op de zwarte lijst van luchtvaartmaatschappijen met een EU-vliegverbod.

• Op 7 maart 2013 was een metrolijner van BinAir verantwoordelijk voor de tijdelijke sluiting van de hoofdbaan van Dublin Airport toen het neuswiel tijdens de landing instortte.

• Op 29 oktober 2018 werd het certificaat van Bin Air ingetrokken door het Luftfahrtbundesamt, waardoor de luchtvaartmaatschappij gedwongen werd alle activiteiten stop te zetten. Uiteindelijk kreeg het zijn licentie terug in december 2020.

To whom it may concern:

We are writing to you regarding your involvement in the cruel business of transporting long-tailed macaques, dogs and other animals to be experimented on at European laboratories. BinAir is one of the few airlines involved in this unethical and anti-scientific industry of animal testing, and we want to urge you to please reconsider your position as an accomplice in the abuse and trade of animals.

Beyond the indisputable ethical issues of torturing and killing these animals, the results obtained from these experiments are meaningless for humans. The situation is especially critical for long-tailed macaques as in 2022, the IUCN classed this species as endangered in the red list. Despite this, the animal testing industry keeps massacring these animals by the thousands with the complicity of airlines like yours; even though cases of irregularities, fraud, illegal capturing and trafficking are regularly brought to light.

The public is not only getting more aware of the truth behind animal testing, this horrendous trade of lives and the conditions these animals are put through during these journeys but also realising the health risk these transports pose as long-tailed macaques are natural hosts of grave zoonotic diseases. Just this week and last month, you transported dozens of macaques from R.C Hartelust B.V, where there has been a tuberculosis outbreak that spread over various centres in Spain, France, Germany, Hungary and Italy, putting the health of lots of people at risk, primarily your workers.

From our organisations, as scientists, and as people who want to avoid the extermination of another species, we are asking you to seriously reconsider your role in this cruel business and stop being responsible for posing so many risks to public health and preventing science from developing non-animal methods and human-relevant research.

We hope to hear from you soon regarding this important and urgent matter.

Sincerely,

Stichting Animal Rights, Animal Welfare Party, Cheshire Animal Rights Campaigns, AboliciónVivisección