From university campuses to multinational companies’ testing labs, PETA exposed and protested cruelty to animals in archaic tests, which led to the cancellation of many experiments and thousands of lives saved.

PETA uncovered evidence that major beverage manufacturers were funding cruel and unnecessary experiments on animals in order to bolster nutritional claims about their products. POM Wonderful had paid experimenters to cause brain damage to mice and damage rabbits’ arteries. PepsiCo—parent company of brands like Pepsi-Cola, Tropicana, and Gatorade—and its partners had funded experiments in which mice were implanted with tumors and rats were injected with cancer-causing chemicals. Coca-Cola’s experiments included cutting open chimpanzees’ faces in order to conduct taste tests. But because of PETA’s powers of persuasion, including letters and calls from our members, these companies agreed to end all animal tests.

The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Eye Institute notified the University of Washington that some grant money would have to be returned after PETA informed the agency that an experimenter at the university had performed unauthorized procedures on monkeys involving the implantation of metal chambers in the animals’ heads and metal coils in their eyeballs. This is the first time we know of that NIH has said that it will demand the return of grant money from an animal experimenter based on a complaint from an animal protection organization.

PETA convinced Dow Chemical not to kill 675 animals in chemical toxicity tests. The company followed PETA’s suggestion to use an in vitro test method instead. DuPont also used information provided by PETA to counter additional testing recommendations by the U.S. government that would have involved the use of more than 1,450 animals.

The Diethyl Ether Producers Association agreed to spare 675 animals slated for painful tests after PETA proved that the desired data already existed.

PETA persuaded the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Product Safety Commission to cancel proposed skin testing of paint strippers on animals by showing that a non-animal test method could be used instead.

General Electric (GE) worked with PETA to reduce the number of animals used in the company’s tests. At PETA’s request, GE also took precedent-setting measures to reduce stress and isolation for the animals who are still used in its tests, including mice and rats. GE’s stance marks a turning point in our anti-vivisection campaign because in the past, companies’ welfare standards have generally applied only to so-called “higher” animals such as dogs and primates—ignoring the welfare of rodents, who make up the vast majority of animals in laboratories and who have no legal protection. GE’s new standards have had a ripple effect, prompting several contract laboratories to adopt similar standards for all their clients.

PETA continued to lead the fight against animal tests by donating $220,000 to the International QSAR Foundation to Reduce Animal Testing and the Institute for In Vitro Sciences for the development of non-animal test methods. As these sophisticated, modern methods replace old-fashioned, less accurate chemical tests on animals, millions of animals will be spared from being poisoned and killed in laboratory experiments.

“PETA has been the first group to step up,” said Gilman Veith, a retired Environmental Protection Agency scientist who now leads the International QSAR Foundation in Two Harbors, Minn., adding that the paradigm shift toward computer modeling over animal testing has “worldwide implications.”

—Duluth News Tribune, September 26, 2007