UK News Article about Coconut Production in Thailand. 3rd July 2020

There is an article in the UK newspaper the Daily Mail on Friday 3rd July with the headline “Waitrose BANS sale of coconut products made from fruit harvested by ‘slave’ monkeys”, so we thought you would like some background and conformation about what the full story is.

Here at TM Duché & Sons, along with our partners Primex we only use and sell coconuts ethically sourced and harvested from the Philippines.

The Philippines coconut production is primarily done by hand, with a majority of the farms producing nuts are small family run plantations.

There are some larger commercial plantations using machinery to shake and catch the coconuts from the trees.

The harvesting process in the Philippines has not changed for the past 100 years, the farms in the Philippines.

We found this old Pathé news clip from 1925 showing the harvest in the Philippines from that year – https://youtu.be/BCjrIx_g8ks

The process has not changed significantly since as you can see in these two videos from 1960 and 2019

Farming in the 1960s

https://youtu.be/sYw0DctGRgU

Farming in 2019

https://youtu.be/rpS1AN3lIBA

One of the primary sources for the story in the Daily Mail is via PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) – https://investigations.peta.org/monkeys-abused-coconut-milk/, which is hard reading and the video is heart-breaking.

Major supermarkets and manufacturers audit TM Duché and Sons and Primex every couple of months with the audit teams travelling to the Philippines and visiting plantations and factories to ensure our products are of the highest ethical and quality standards.

The products we supply are of the highest standards – other suppliers are bringing in products from other countries that may be cheaper and available right now. However, you will always risk a lower quality product that is not ethically sourced.