AIRLINE APOLOGIZES FOR FEEDING LIVE SQUIRRELS INTO SHREDDER

Apr 26th, 1999 • Posted in: News

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines apologized last week for its decision to kill 440 illegally imported Chinese squirrels by putting them into an industrial shredding machine.

The incident prompted harsh criticism from animal rights groups, a debate in Parliament, a KLM investigation, and the temporary suspension of the worker who fed the live animals into the shredder.

The Chinese squirrels, en route to a collector in Greece, arrived in the Netherlands without proper documentation. When the Beijing exporter refused to take them back, the airline destroyed them, according to a BBC report.

KLM issued a statement saying the airline “made a grave mistake on ethical grounds,” but insisted that government officials had approved the airline’s method of killing confiscated animals.

Animal rights groups say the airline has used the same shredder to kill more than 200 other squirrels, water turtles, and rare parakeets this month alone, according to the Associated Press.

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