Cuisine: I hope they don't pick anything else before the tea!

I was in a Teavana at my local mall, and I noticed that they had some oolong tea that cost like 40 dollars an ounce or some shit. Apparently, monkeys are trained to pick tea in China. One company's china monkey tea has been discussed on many blogs, but I couldn't seem to find a discussion of the elephant in the room. Isn't this clearly exploitation of animals? If not, how long will it take to train a monkey to sew a pair of GAP jeans? Is this a nonissue until we deal with the despicable working conditions of HUMAN tea pickers, who are hopped up on betel nuts 24/7?

This is the best video on YouTube about monkey picked tea. It's, entitled "Stories with John episode 6," in which a man, probably John, relays his British story of watching monkeys do it (giggle).

Although unrelated to monkey tea, I'm sure the rest of John's videos are also enjoyable. He reminds me of Commander McBragg, from the segments on the Rocky & Bullwinkle show about the old, stuffy, jingoist British adventurer.

What the hell was I talking about? Oh, monkeys. The joke in the title is really bad, but I was referring to this. We should stop this animal training nonsense before it gets out of hand, and someone tries to use pigeons to drop bombs!