Victory! Military Supplier AmeriQual Cuts Funding for Animal Tests After Push From PETA
For Immediate Release:
December 16, 2024
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
In a significant win for animals, Evansville, Indiana-based company AmeriQual Group—the largest supplier of Meals, Ready-to-Eat to the U.S. military—has stopped funding cruel and pointless experiments on animals at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Food Research Institute after hearing from PETA.
AmeriQual and multiple other major food and beverage companies—including The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo. Inc., Campbell Soup Company, and more—withdrew their support of the institute after PETA informed them that the Food Research Institute was using their donations to force-feed mice parasite-infested feces, poison pregnant monkeys and kill their unborn babies, and conduct other deadly experiments.
After hearing from these major sponsors and PETA, the Food Research Institute changed its sponsorship policy to allow corporations to restrict their donations from being used to fund animal experimentation—something it hadn’t previously allowed. AmeriQual, Campbell Soup Company, PepsiCo., Fresh Innovations, Sensient Technologies, and Tribe 9 Foods obtained commitments from the institute to divert their contributions from animal experimentation, while Coca-Cola withdrew its sponsorship.
“Thanks to AmeriQual and other companies, the Food Research Institute has fewer dollars to waste on cruel and useless tests on animals,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA calls on General Mills and Kraft Heinz to follow these companies’ lead by demanding that their funding never be used to torment monkeys, mice, or other animals.”
Experimenters funded by the Food Research Institute have force-fed pregnant monkeys whipping cream contaminated with listeria—killing some of their fetuses—then cut the mothers open, took their dead babies, and dissected the corpses. Experimenters have also force-fed mice parasite-infested feces before suffocating them and injected others with botulinum bacteria and waited for them to die.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
