Victory! PepsiCo Cuts Funding for Barbaric Animal Tests After Push From PETA

For Immediate Release:
November 13, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

In a significant win for animals, Purchase-based food and beverage giant PepsiCo. Inc.—which also owns Gatorade, Lay’s, Quaker, and other leading brands—has stopped funding cruel and pointless experiments on animals at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Food Research Institute after hearing from PETA.

PepsiCo and four other major food and beverage companies—The Coca-Cola Company, Campbell Soup Company, Fresh Innovations, and Sensient Technologies—also withdrew their support of the institute after PETA informed the companies’ leadership 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. PepsiCo, Campbell Soup Company, Fresh Innovations, and Sensient Technologies obtained commitments from the institute to divert their contributions away from animal experimentation, while Coca-Cola withdrew its sponsorship.

“Thanks to PepsiCo 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 injected mice 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.