World’s Second-Largest Wine and Spirits Company Bans Animal Tests

After discussions with PETA, Pernod Ricard, the world’s second-largest wine and spirits company—whose major brands include Absolut Vodka, Chivas Regal, Seagram’s Gin, Jameson Irish Whiskey, and Malibu—established a new policy banning animal testing.

Pernod Ricard is also requiring that all its supplier companies (numbering more than 1,600 at last count) abide by the same policy barring animal experimentation, multiplying the impact of this victory for animals who suffer in laboratories.

Before this policy went into effect, the company and its experimentation facility conducted or donated products to animal experiments that used more than 1,000 rats. In one test, Pernod Ricard supplied apple extract to experimenters who force-fed it—along with rat or human feces—to rats, then injected them with a carcinogen that induces colon cancer, cut off their heads, and dissected them.