Victory! St. Louis-Based ICL Performance Products Joins Nationwide Push for Animal-Free Research

For Immediate Release:
February 24, 2026

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

St. Louis, Mo. — In a significant win for animals, ICL Performance Products, based in St. Louis, has heeded PETA’s call to stop funding cruel experiments on animals at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Food Research Institute.

The Food Research Institute pays experimenters to conduct tests on animals related to food and food ingredients. It has funded experimenters who force-feed mice parasite-infested feces and force-feed pregnant monkeys listeria-contaminated whipping cream before cutting them open and dissecting the babies killed by the bacteria. They’ve also injected mice with bacteria that cause botulism and waited for them to die before dissecting them.

After hearing from PETA, the institute changed its sponsorship policy and created the “Food Research Institute Programmatic (Non-animal) Support Fund,” which allows sponsors to divert their donations from animal testing. ICL Performance Products joins PepsiCo, Inc., Campbell Soup Company, and 19 other sponsors that have either directed their donations to the animal-free fund or cut off sponsorship entirely.

“ICL Performance Products read the writing on the wall and rightly decided they didn’t want the Food Research Institute squandering their money on cruel, outdated experiments on animals,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA calls on Wegmans Food Markets to follow suit and demand that their institute funding is never used to torment monkeys, mice, or any other animals.”

Macaques isolated and confined to cages in a laboratory, for illustrative purposes only. Credit: PETA

ICL’s action aligns with a growing national movement away from animal testing under the Trump administration, including the National Institutes of Health’s groundbreaking decision to reduce experiments on animals, instead prioritizing human-relevant research. The agency’s plan incorporated several elements of PETA scientists’ Research Modernization Now, a comprehensive strategy for replacing tests on animals with cutting-edge, animal-free methods.

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.