Agropur Dairy Cooperative Bans Animal Testing After Talks with PETA
For Immediate Release:
December 9, 2024
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
While PETA, a vegan organization, will not be fully endorsing Agropur Dairy Cooperative until it switches to plant-based milk, it is praising the company for one aspect of its operation: the multi-billion-dollar food manufacturer headquartered in Canada, is getting out of the animal testing business. Agropur has banned all animal testing not explicitly required by law after talks with PETA.
Previously, experimenters supported by Agropur have repeatedly force-fed mice a high-fat, high-sucrose diet designed to make them obese, then starved them, injected them with insulin and force-fed them glucose. Agropur also paid experimenters to force-feed rats to cause obesity, glucose intolerance, hypertension, and strokes. Experimenters then starved the animals, inserted catheters into their intestines and veins, and injected sugar or insulin. The rats suffered from loss of coordination, immobility, incontinence, convulsions, and rapid, extreme weight loss before they were killed and dissected.
Agropur has signed PETA’s new Eat Without Experiments pledge that it “does not and shall not conduct, fund, commission, or allow any animal testing for any purpose, unless explicitly required by law” and receives a good rating in PETA’s program, which categorizes food and beverage companies according to their animal testing status only. Animals have been used in cruel and deadly experiments by food and beverage companies, sometimes to establish dubious health claims for marketing products or ingredients.
“Force-feeding rats and mice to the point of obesity before starving, sickening, and killing them is both cruel and unscientific,” says PETA Vice President of International Laboratory Methods Shalin Gala. “PETA commends Agropur for signing PETA’s pledge to ban these tests and urges other major food companies to follow suit by embracing state-of-the-art, 100% humane, animal-free research.”
Agropur joins dozens of other food and beverage companies that PETA has persuaded to ban animal testing. PETA calls on other companies—including Oreo-maker Mondelēz International—to follow suit.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
