Victory! Food Research Institute Creates New Animal-Free Fund After Hearing From PETA
Update (February 5, 2025): Victory! Another significant win for animals abused in laboratories! After hearing from PETA and food and beverage companies that we convinced to avoid animal testing, the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Food Research Institute has created a new fund that allows corporate sponsors to support research that is entirely animal-free.
The fund, titled the “Food Research Institute Programmatic (Non-animal) Support Fund,” has a stated purpose to “support research that does not involve animal testing and general department operations at the Food Research Institute.” It will boost modern, non-animal research while helping sponsors easily prevent their donations from paying for experimenters to poison, slice open, and kill animals in cruel and pointless tests.
Help save more animals abused in pointless food experiments by urging the maker of Oreo to join PETA’s Eat Without Experiments program:
Victory! After a push from PETA, prominent food and beverage companies—including PepsiCo Inc., The Coca-Cola Company, Campbell Soup Company, and more—are closing their checkbooks and refusing to fund cruel and deadly experiments on animals.
The move comes after PETA contacted company leadership, informing them that their money was being used to kill animals in pointless experiments conducted at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Food Research Institute. The institute’s experimenters repeatedly force-fed parasite-infested feces to animals before slicing their bodies open, among other horrors.
After considering PETA’s information, The Coca-Cola Company cut off all sponsorship of the Food Research Institute, while companies like PepsiCo, Inc. and Campbell Soup Company, among others, placed restrictions on their donations, prohibiting another cent of their money from funding tests on animals there.
Money for Nothing
Previously, the Food Research Institute didn’t allow companies to choose how their money was spent. We successfully pushed it to change that policy. Now, corporate sponsors can opt out of funding cruelty, ensuring the institute has less cash to waste on pointless experiments and preventing countless animals from suffering in ridiculously unscientific experiments that are irrelevant to human health.
Experimenters funded by the institute have conducted numerous curiosity-driven experiments on animals despite the widespread availability of superior, non-animal research methods. In one test, experimenters force-fed pregnant monkeys whipping cream contaminated with listeria bacteria, killing some of their fetuses. They then cut the mothers open, took their dead babies, and dissected the corpses.
In another test, experimenters repeatedly force-fed bacteria to mice, suffocated them to death, and dissected them. Experimenters also injected mice with botulinum bacteria and waited for them to die from the toxin.
Companies That Have Done the Right Thing
PETA is urging General Mills and Kraft Heinz to get in line and join these compassionate companies by mandating that the money that they contribute to the Food Research Institute be restricted to only non-animal research. After hearing from us, other companies have already made that decision or stopped funding the institute altogether. Here’s the growing list:
- Tribe 9 Foods
- AmeriQual Group
- Campbell Soup Company
- The Coca-Cola Company
- Dairy Industries (Jamaica)
- Fresh Innovations
- Great Lakes Cheese Company
- Old Fashioned Cheese
- PepsiCo, Inc.
- Sensient Technologies
- Winona Foods
What You Can Do
PETA is now urging General Mills and Kraft Heinz to get in line and join these compassionate companies by mandating that the money that they contribute to the Food Research Institute be restricted to only non-animal research.
Please help us keep animals out of laboratories by taking action to urge Taiwan food and beverage companies to stop killing animals in product experiments:
