Johnson & Johnson Under Fire for Reportedly Killing Pigs in Sales Training
PETA Calls On Company to Cancel Reported Plans for Deadly Demonstration to Sales Reps Next Week
For Immediate Release:
October 19, 2016
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
An insider tip has prompted PETA to call for the cancellation of a deadly training exercise by Johnson & Johnson for its sales personnel as well as the end of all such use of animals.
The New Jersey–based company has reportedly scheduled a mandatory training exercise for October 27 in Cincinnati in which sales representatives for its Ethicon division will be forced to watch pigs be cut open and killed. PETA has sent a letter urging Johnson & Johnson to cancel the exercise, end the use of animals for sales training, and switch to superior non-animal methods, as its major competitors have already done. PETA first exposed the company’s use of animals for such training in 2009 and introduced a shareholder resolution in 2012 urging a switch to humane methods.
“No salesperson needs to watch a pig bleed out and die to see how a medical device works,” says PETA Senior Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. “A sophisticated human-anatomy simulator—or even a simple video of a human surgery—would teach them all they need to know without harming animals.”
Non-animal training methods—such as advanced human-patient simulators, “living” human-cadaver models, synthetic soft-tissue models, and in vitro models—are widely in use, including by multibillion-dollar medical-device manufacturer Medtronic, which publicly states on its website that it “does not pursue the use of animals for the sole purpose of training sales staff.”
