Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/26/target-and-costco-refuse-to-profit-from-chained-monkeys.html
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I wonder how much of their inventory comes from sweatshops, either staffed with prisoners, undocumented immigrants, or children overseas?
But good for them on this at least.
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Better stop that “monkey’n around”.
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Do they have this on their shelves? Where the entire point of the game is to create a chain of monkeys? HYPOCRITES!!!
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The company will return to using child labor, which is A-OK for corporations!
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They never stopped.
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Peter Gabriel can finally relax.
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PETA’s footage tells the tale, but I really wonder if training monkeys for coconut picking is really all that much less work than a damn stick.
At some point the stick isn’t going to reach certain places that you need a hand to get into.
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the monkeys need jobs!
otherwise they turn to lives of crime!
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Honestly fuck them. They are still profiting from shrimp and other seafood harvested by human slaves. They’re still profiting from palm oil that continues to pose a number of issues they said would be fixed, and it isn’t fixed.
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“Thai coconut producers are exploiting monkeys and lying about it“
Does this mean we’ve reached peak late stage capitalism or am I being woefully naive again?
BINGO!
you are absolutely correct. shrimp and palm (also coconut) oils are very problematic regarding human suffering and exploitation. yet trained monkeys is a line not to cross??!! screw that!
now excuse me while I retire to the parlour to have a brandy and a cigar, courtesy my monkey butler… he’s quite dapper in his little white jacket and black bow tie
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I’ve stopped asking how deep the moral hole in late-stage capitalism is. Just when you think you can see the bottom it turns out just to be a resting spot on the continuous downward spiral.
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I uh, wasn’t looking for PETA footage. I guess someone with the monkeys managed to make it un-fun. (Where is the videogame? Or rather the raging monkey coconut-dropping game and the other one where you train monkeys without being cruel or just buried in coconuts for monkey fun. Not the OG Atari Coconuts which is inverted Kaboom!)
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You should call the office and ask to talk to the buying teams. You’d be shocked to know the lengths they go to in order to do the right thing. Call the receptionist and ask!
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I seriously doubt they spend time inspecting every single detail from their supply chains. That would be a near impossible task, given that much of our mass produced goods have ethical issues. It’s not a problem one company can solve. It’s a problem that needs international regulation. So if they want to help on that issue, they push for that. Otherwise, it’s just so much performative ethics to raise their stock price.
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Well, I’ve worked for them for 33 years and I’ve seen the lengths they go to to be ethical. Preserving trees and sacred spaces when building, ensuring shrimp farmers are not using harmful chemicals, building a sustainability department to reduce waste and improve recycling, using solar wherever possible, paying fair wages to cashew farmers in Burkina Faso, helping them build day care centers so more females could work at the cashew farm, visiting factories in China to personally view working conditions, training buyers on ethical government buying practices, and just treating their employees well as a philosophy. I could go on. But the coolest part : you’ll never hear about it. They don’t brag. They pride themselves in “doing the right thing” silently, for that purpose, not as a marketing trick. You’ll never see a commercial. You’ll never know the millions they raise every year for children’s hospital. But don’t take my word for it. Call them and dig, and you’ll see. 
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It’s all around us.
It’s the basis of capitalism, late stage and other versions.
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That’s great, but you really can’t fix all the problems of capitalism that these companies did not create in the first place. It’s all piecemeal until the roots of the problem are dug out.
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