Give the Animals 5 > Shareholder Campaign

2004 Resolution: Give the Animals 5

PETA’s “Give the Animals 5” Campaign calls on companies to abandon five crude and cruel animal tests, replacing them with state-of-the-art and scientifically valid non-animal methods that are already in use in other countries. With the help of PETA supporters who hold stock in Amgen, a resolution was filed in the fall of 2003, calling on the company to do the following:

Issue a policy statement publicly committing to use in vitro tests for assessing skin corrosion, skin absorption, skin irritation, phototoxicity, and pyrogenicity endpoints and generally committing to the elimination of product testing on animals in favor of validated in vitro alternatives

Formally request that the relevant regulatory agencies accept validated in vitro tests as replacements to animal tests

Amgen opposed our resolution and sought permission from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—the agency responsible for administering federal securities laws in the U.S.—to exclude our resolution from its proxy statement, arguing that it dealt with ordinary business matters that are not subject to a vote by stockholders. Furthermore, Amgen failed to send PETA a copy of its “No Action” letter, so we were unaware that it was filed and therefore unable to offer a rebuttal. Remarkably, the SEC failed to take this into account when issuing an opinion concurring with Amgen’s arguments. Thus, PETA’s resolution was never brought to a shareholder vote.

2005 Resolution: Give the Animals 5

The following year, PETA submitted an expanded resolution calling on Amgen to do the following:

Commit specifically to using only non-animal methods for assessing skin corrosion, skin irritation, skin absorption, phototoxicity, and pyrogenicity

Confirm that it is in the company’s best interests to commit to replacing animal-based tests with non-animal methods

Petition the relevant regulatory agencies requiring safety testing for the company’s products to accept as total replacements for animal-based methods those approved non-animal methods described above, along with any others currently used and accepted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other developed countries

Despite assurances that Amgen is “fully committed to replacing in vivo testing with other procedures wherever such tests are scientifically valid,” the company took a position in opposition to our shareholder resolution. PETA’s resolution was brought to a vote at Amgen’s annual meeting in Seattle, Washington, on May 11, 2005. Approximately 19.6 million shares (2.6 percent) were voted in favor of the resolution.

Although shareholder resolutions almost never win the required number of votes the first time that they are proposed, they do provide an opportunity to educate management, boards, and other shareholders about important issues, leading to change over the long term. In fact, in this case, discussions took place after the company’s annual meeting, which we hope will lead to ongoing constructive relations between PETA and Amgen.

2006 Resolution: Animal Welfare Policy

In 2006, PETA submitted another resolution to Amgen, calling on the company to develop and make publicly accessible an animal welfare policy that would include reducing the numbers of animals used, provide social and behavioral enrichment measures to the animals used, and apply to any outside laboratories used. Amgen is unusual among large drug discovery companies in its failure to post any animal welfare policy on its Web site.

The resolution was largely the result of the horrors uncovered in the independent contract testing laboratory Covance Inc., whose officials boast that they have every major company as a client.

Amgen published our resolution in its proxy materials, along with its opposition statement advising shareholders to vote against it. On May 10, 2006, a PETA representative traveled to Santa Monica, California, to present our resolution at Amgen’s annual meeting. Our resolution garnered 8.4 percent of the vote (almost 58 million shares), which qualified it to be reintroduced in 2007.