Chevron Faces Shareholder Resolution Over Donations to Dog-Abusing University

PETA Resolution Prompted by Oil Giant’s Massive Donation to Texas A&M University, Where Golden Retrievers Are Used in Muscular Dystrophy Experiments

For Immediate Release:
December 13, 2017

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA has submitted a shareholder resolution calling on Chevron to reconsider its support for Texas A&M University (TAMU) while the school conducts painful and deadly muscular dystrophy (MD) experiments on dogs. The company has donated $69 million to TAMU, and one of its vice presidents is an alumnus of the school. So far, the company has refused to respond to PETA’s invitations to discuss the experiments or to the 109,825 consumers who have e-mailed it through PETA’s online action alert.

“Every single dollar implicates Chevron in the miserable lives and early deaths of the dogs who are suffering in this school’s muscular dystrophy laboratory,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on the company to hit the brakes on its donations until Texas A&M stops breeding, tormenting, and killing dogs in studies that have failed to produce a cure or even a treatment that reverses muscular dystrophy in humans.”

PETA obtained video footage of TAMU’s laboratory that shows dogs in bleak metal cages struggling to walk, swallow, and even breathe. Decades of these experiments have failed to alleviate human suffering, whereas cutting-edge techniques, such as studying cells and tissues from human MD patients and transplanting healthy, human-derived muscle cells into patients, are proving to be promising areas of research.

In September, the company also reportedly orchestrated the premature removal of several PETA ads placed at public bus shelters near its headquarters. The ads showed a crippled golden retriever named Peony alongside the message “Chevron: Stop Fueling Dog-Abusing Texas A&M.” PETA’s efforts to end TAMU’s ineffective dog experiments have received support from patients afflicted with MD, patients afflicted with MD, scientists—who have criticized the experiments’ inapplicability to human patients—and public figures, including Miami Dolphins quarterback and TAMU alumnus Ryan Tannehill and commentator Bill Maher, who called the lead researcher “dogs’ worst enemy.”

PETA owns stock in Chevron and a number of other companies in order to advocate for animals directly to shareholders. For more information, please visit PETA.org or click here.