Major Victory! Ford Motor Company Bans All Animal Testing

For Immediate Release:
July 12, 2023

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA has secured another major victory for animals: Ford Motor Company has announced a ban on all animal testing, following months of pressure from and discussions with PETA.

The victory follows a 21-month PETA campaign to persuade Ford to close major policy loopholes that involved paying others to conduct gruesome animal tests for the company, such as this one:

In Ford’s 2023 Integrated Sustainability and Financial Report, the automaker updated its policy at PETA’s request to close all loopholes: “Ford’s practice is not to use or fund animals for testing nor to ask others to do that for us.”

PETA discovered that Ford paid for a study published in 2018 in which 27 pigs were killed. The animals were then strung up by wires through their spines and slammed with a high-impact pendulum in an attempt to replicate car crash injuries. A public outcry followed, including messages from more than 125,000 PETA supporters and a letter from actor and Detroit native Lily Tomlin.

In May, a PETA scientist attended Ford’s annual general meeting of shareholders and urged a vote in favor of a PETA resolution that called on the automaker to disclose all animal testing it conducts or pays for that isn’t required by law.

“This is a major, lifesaving win for animals, and Ford will never again pay to have pendulums smashed into pigs as human stand-ins,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA applauds this auto giant for catching up to its rivals and hitting the brakes on needless and cruel animal testing.”

Crash tests on pigs aren’t just cruel—they’re irrelevant. Pigs and other animals don’t naturally sit upright in car seats, and pig and human anatomies are vastly different. Most automakers use human-relevant methods, such as clinical studies, computer modeling, three-dimensional medical imaging, or sophisticated manikins.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.