After 65 Years, Kellogg Company Ends Deadly Animal Tests, Strikes Agreement with PETA
New Policy Prohibits Conducting, Funding, Supporting, and Condoning Experiments on Animals, Sparing Thousands of Rats and Hamsters
For Immediate Release:
January 31, 2019
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Following extensive discussions with PETA that spanned more than 11 years, the world’s leading cereal maker, the Kellogg Company, has adopted a new policy ending the use of animals in harmful and deadly tests for food products or ingredients when not explicitly required by law—a practice that Kellogg has pursued until now for nearly 65 years.
PETA first urged Kellogg to stop conducting and funding experiments on animals in 2007. In the following years, the company pledged to minimize and limit the scope of its tests on animals, required audits of all testing laboratories it used, and eliminated animal tests in its own laboratories. Its new policy, recently finalized, prohibits conducting, funding, supporting, and condoning animal tests.
“The global food industry is recognizing that no marketing claim can possibly excuse force-feeding, poisoning, suffocating, and killing gentle rats in cruel and deadly tests,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “The Kellogg Company is no longer a cereal killer of animals in deadly tests, and PETA applauds the company’s decision to embrace superior, non-animal research methods.”
From 1995 to 2016, Kellogg conducted, funded, or supplied materials for deadly experiments that used a total of 1,213 rats and 60 hamsters. The company’s tests on animals date back to at least 1954, but after reaching an agreement with PETA, Kellogg posted its new public policy prohibiting animal testing in January 2019.
In one of Kellogg’s tests, experimenters starved rats for two days, removed half of their small intestine, fed them fatty acids, force-fed or injected them with drugs, and then killed and dissected them. In another, experimenters fed rats a high-fat diet with wheat bran, repeatedly injected them with a carcinogen that induces colon tumors, suffocated them, and dissected them. None of these experiments to substantiate product-marketing claims is required by law.
PETA notes that tests such as those previously conducted or funded by Kellogg, which involve common food ingredients with no toxicity concerns, can safely be conducted using humans and that numerous such studies have already been conducted and published.
Kellogg joins a growing list of major food companies—including Asahi Group Holdings, Barilla, The Coca-Cola Company, Constellation Brands, Ensuiko Sugar Refining Co., Ezaki Glico, Fuji Oil Holdings, General Mills, House Foods, ITO EN, Kewpie Corporation, Kikkoman, Kirin Holdings Co., Ltd., Lipton, McCain Foods, Meiji Holdings, Morinaga & Co., Nagase & Co., NH Foods, Ocean Spray, Nissin Foods Holdings, PepsiCo, POM Wonderful LLC, Riken Vitamin, Sapporo Holdings, Satake Corporation, Sensient Technologies Corporation, Suntory Holdings, T. Hasegawa Co., Toyo Suisan Kaisha, Welch’s, and Yakult Honsha—that have worked with PETA to adopt new policies banning animal tests.
