Ford Motor Company Must Slam the Brakes on Animal Testing, PETA Tells Shareholders

For Immediate Release:
November 30, 2022

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA wants Ford Motor Company to come clean about its animal testing and today, through a donor who owns stock in the company, filed a shareholder resolution asking the automaker to disclose information about testing it does that is not required by law.

PETA uncovered evidence that Ford violated its own 2009 ban on using animals for experiments when it paid for a study that used and killed 27 pigs in a crash test. After they were killed, the pigs were held aloft by wires extending through their spines and their bodies were slammed with a high-impact pendulum. Public outcry was swift, and Ford established a new policy, but that policy includes a loophole that allows this type of testing to continue.

“Ford must slam the brakes on this outdated, grisly practice,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “All other U.S. car companies have moved on to superior, animal-free research methods. Ford risks being relegated to the rear-view mirror.”

PETA—which has rallied more than 105,000 supporters to contact Ford to demand an end to its animal testing—points out that pigs and other animals do not naturally sit upright in car seats, and a pig’s anatomy is very different from that of a human, making crash tests on these animals irrelevant for human research. Most automakers use human-relevant methods, such as clinical studies, computer modeling, three-dimensional medical imaging, and 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, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.