Ford Motor Company Slams the Brakes on Animal Testing

After relentless pressure from PETA, actor Lily Tomlin, and more than 125,000 dedicated supporters, we received confirmation that Ford Motor Company would definitively slam the brakes on its animal testing. Despite its assurance in 2009 that it didn’t conduct or fund such tests, we uncovered its financial involvement in a gruesome experiment in which 27 pigs were killed for barbaric crash tests. Following a rigorous 21-month PETA campaign, including a powerful letter from Tomlin, a Detroit native, to Ford and a shareholder resolution filed by PETA demanding transparency, the automaker updated its public policy at PETA’s request to close all loopholes that previously allowed the funding of animal testing: “Ford’s practice is not to use or fund animals for testing nor to ask others to do that for us.” In a letter to PETA, Ford went even further by updating its Supplier Code of Conduct, requiring that vendors to Ford “[d]o not to use animals for testing nor require sub-contractors to do so,” and made its “expectations [against animal testing] explicit in rules for university research project[s] conducted on Ford’s behalf.”