PETA Buys Stock in Top Two Tobacco Companies to Push for End to Animal Testing

Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Still Kill Animals in Unreliable Tests

For Immediate Release:
September 6, 2012

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Norfolk, Va. — PETA has bought stock in the two largest tobacco manufacturers in order to prevent thousands of animals from being forced to inhale smoke for months at a time—a testing method not required by law and irrelevant to human smokers—and then being killed.

Owning stock in R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris' parent company, Philip Morris International, will allow PETA to attend annual meetings and submit shareholder resolutions calling for an end to a practice that is inhumane and archaic. Modern, non-animal testing methods are available and are less expensive and more reliable than animal tests.

"Forcing rats to breathe cigarette smoke for hours on end is cruel and won't make smoking any safer," says PETA Senior Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. "By joining Philip Morris' and R.J. Reynolds' shareholders, PETA will push these companies toward the exclusive use of more humane and accurate non-animal testing methods that are already employed around the world."

In one recent study, experimenters with Philip Morris—the maker of Marlboro, Virginia Slims, and Parliament, among other brands—stuffed thousands of rats into tiny canisters and pumped tobacco smoke directly into their noses for six hours a day for 90 consecutive days. The rats were then killed and dissected. In a recent study conducted by R.J. Reynolds—whose brands include Camel, Kool, Winston, and Pall Mall—experimenters forced hundreds of mice and rats to eat food laced with tobacco for three months. Some of the animals developed hair loss, swollen genitals, and skin ulcers. All of them were killed and dissected.

None of these tests is required by law. The risks of existing and new tobacco products can be assessed using solely in vitro and human-based research. Tobacco tests on animals have been banned in many countries, including the U.K., Germany, and Belgium, and Canada requires only modern non-animal tests.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.