Five Major Companies End Support for Animal Testing at Food Research Institute

Following advocacy efforts by PETA, several top food and beverage companies—PepsiCo, The Coca-Cola Company, Campbell Soup, Fresh Innovations, and Sensient Technologies—have decided to stop funding experiments on animals at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Food Research Institute. PETA informed these companies that their donations were being used to fund research that involved painful and lethal tests on animals, including force-feeding them parasite-infested substances and then dissecting them. In response, these companies have either fully withdrawn their sponsorship or restricted their contributions to prevent any funding of animal experiments.

This shift is a result of PETA’s efforts to bring transparency to the institute’s practices. Previously, companies had no control over how their funds were used, but now sponsors can choose not to Support experiments on animals. This policy change, achieved after persistent advocacy, limits the institute’s budget for animal testing, effectively curbing unnecessary suffering in experiments that experts argue are outdated and unnecessary given modern alternatives.

PETA’s campaign highlighted several disturbing experiments previously conducted by the institute, including studies where pregnant monkeys were force-fed listeria-infected cream, resulting in fetal deaths, as well as tests where mice were injected with toxins and later dissected. According to PETA, more humane, non-animal research methods are available, making such animal experiments scientifically irrelevant and needlessly cruel.

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