Today's New York Times, (Thursday, May 31) announces another step forward. An article by Brenda Goodman in the Business Section (pg C3) is headed "Coca-Cola And PepsiCo Agree to Curb Animal Tests" and opens with:
"Under pressure from animal rights advocates, two soft drink giants, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, have agreed to stop directly financing research that uses animals to test or develop their products, except where such testing is required by law.
"Researchers at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sought the assurances after discovering studies financed by the companies that used animals like rats and chimpanzees to test taste perception and, in some cases, to bolster support for promotional health claims."
The article quotes a researcher "who had been working under the Coca-Cola grant" :
''It's very easy to characterize scientific research like this in a bad light. To do medical research, you sometimes need an animal model.''
But Goodman writes:
"Not everyone agrees with Dr. DeSimone's thinking, particularly when it involves tests on highly intelligent animals, as did a study involving a Coca-Cola scientist, financed by Nutrasweet, that cut open the faces of chimpanzees to study nerve impulses used in the perception of sweet tastes."
The article also quotes Dr. Alan Goldberg, director of the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing at Johns Hopkins University. He says:
''I have never found chimpanzee work justifiable." And, "The bottom line for me is that I'd love to see animal studies disappear entirely. In vitro models are cleaner.''
The article also tells us that soft drink companies are starting to respond to scrutiny by PETA and it notes that "Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice agreed to cease tests on animals after PETA disclosed a 2005 study financed by the company that tested the juice to see if it might relieve artificially induced erectile dysfunction in rabbits."
The full New York Times article is on line at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/business/31testing-web.html
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Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)
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Date: Thu May 31 10:18:25 2007
