Victory! La Crosse-Based Kwik Trip Joins Nationwide Push for Animal-Free Research

For Immediate Release:
August 11, 2026

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

After hearing from PETA, La Crosse-based Kwik Trip, one of the largest privately held convenience store chains with more than 900 locations across the Midwest, has taken steps to ensure that its donations to the University of Wisconsin–Madison Food Research Institute will not support cruel experiments on animals.

The Food Research Institute uses animals in food and ingredient tests. It has funded experiments that include force-feeding mice parasite-infested feces and forcing pregnant monkeys to eat listeria-contaminated whipping cream before cutting them open and dissecting the fetuses killed by the bacteria. Experimenters have also injected mice with bacteria that cause botulism, waited for them to die, and dissected them.

Following complaints from PETA and university donors, the institute changed its sponsorship policy and created the “Food Research Institute Programmatic (Non-animal) Support Fund,” which allows sponsors to prohibit their donations from being spent on animal studies.

Kwik Trip joins PepsiCo, Inc., Campbell Soup Company, and 20 other sponsors that have either directed their donations to the animal-free fund or cut off sponsorship entirely.

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

“Kwik Trip executives rightly decided they didn’t want the Food Research Institute squandering their money on cruel, outdated experiments on animals,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala.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 urges Wegmans Food Markets to follow suit, restrict its funding to the Food Research Institute’s non-animal research fund, and join PETA’s Eat Without Experiments program to show consumers it’s committed to sparing animals from cruel tests.”

Kwik Trip’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.