Ball Corporation Ends Funding of Spine-Injury Animal Tests After PETA Talks

Fortune 500 Company Had Funded Experiments Via ‘Wings for Life’ Charity That Crushed, Paralyzed, Cut Open, Drugged, and Electrocuted Animals

For Immediate Release:
October 1, 2019

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Following nearly eight months of discussions with PETA, Ball Corporation—the world’s largest manufacturer of recyclable metal beverage and food containers and a “Platinum Partner” of the charity Wings for Life—has adopted a new policy against funding, conducting, or commissioning experiments on animals that aren’t explicitly required by law. As a result, Wings for Life—a spinal cord–injury foundation cofounded by the creator of Red Bull—must now use Ball Corporation’s funding for non-animal research activities only.

In discussions with the company, PETA scientists pointed out that these experiments haven’t helped humans and impede progress because of physiological differences between species. The only drug for spinal cord injuries currently available has been tested on numerous animals with drastically varying results. The U.S. National Institutes of Health admits that 95% of drugs that test safe and effective in animal tests fail in human clinical trials.

In one of the experiments that Ball Corporation helped fund through Wings for Life prior to its adoption of the new policy, experimenters inserted electrodes into a monkey’s muscles, forced her to perform stress-inducing behavioral tasks, cut open her spine, inserted electrodes into her spinal cord, electrocuted her nerves, and then killed her. In another, experimenters bred genetically modified mice, repeatedly force-fed them a drug, cut open their spines, crushed and compressed their exposed spinal cords—which partially paralyzed them—and then killed and dissected them.

“Ball Corporation is leading the way toward modern, non-animal research that could actually help patients with spinal cord injuries,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “In futile tests that serve no benefit for human health, Wings for Life has funded experimenters who’ve injured and killed more than 4,700 animals in tests published just since 2018. PETA is now calling on the organization to end this horror show and switch to superior, animal-free research methods.”

PETA opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview that fosters violence toward other animals. For more information, please visit PETA.org or click here.