July 2007
For more than a year, PETA worked with PepsiCo–the parent company of brands like Pepsi-Cola, Frito-Lay, Tropicana, Quaker Oats, and Gatorade–to convince the corporation and its partners to end their funding of animal tests, one of which involved infecting mice with a respiratory virus and then forcing them to exercise on a treadmill for more than two hours for three consecutive days, after which they were all killed. These tests were designed primarily to substantiate health claims on product labels and to further basic nutrition research–neither of which needs to be done on animals.
After hearing from PETA, PepsiCo announced that it will not conduct or fund experiments on animals and has pledged to communicate its opposition to animal testing to all entities with which the corporation works.