PepsiCo Declares No More Animal Tests! May 9, 2007

Posted by Marta at May 9, 2007 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 46 ) | TrackBack

Exciting News: After a year of discussions with PETA, multi-billion dollar food industry giant PepsiCo has agreed to end all funding for animal tests.

PETA's campaign to convince food and beverage companies to drop animal tests has been gaining momentum, with Welch's, Ocean Spray, and POM Wonderful agreeing to drop all funding for animal experiments in favor of non-animal test methods. And now food industry giant PepsiCo—you know, the absolutely gigantic multi-billion dollar parent company of brands like Pepsi-Cola, Frito-Lay, Tropicana, Quaker Oats and Gatorade—has joined the ever growing list of companies that are creating innovative products without the use of animals in laboratory tests.

One test that PepsiCo's subsidiary, Tropicana, funded involved injecting 60 young rats with a chemical that causes colon cancer, leaving the majority of these animals to suffer with the disease for seven months only to be killed at the end of the experiment. Completely ridiculous.

Luckily, PepsiCo has now stated the following:

"PepsiCo does not do any animal testing and does not directly fund testing using animals. … Where testing on animals is not required, PepsiCo strongly endorses efficient and effective research that does not include the use of animals. We will encourage our partners to use alternatives to animal testing and share this statement with organizations we believe to be involved in projects potentially involving animal research done on behalf of PepsiCo or with PepsiCo or PepsiCo Foundation funding."

So what does all of this mean? More and more companies are realizing that no one wants to buy products that were tested on animals—especially for something like food and drinks! I mean, hello—I don't need or want an animal to be experimented on to make health claims about my drinks, ya know?

This makes me want to do the "Happy Happy Joy Joy" dance from Ren and Stimpy—remember that? Good stuff.

♥ Marta