Shareholder Campaign > Chevron-Texaco

Chevron-Texaco is the second-largest integrated oil and gas company in the U.S. and the fifth-largest in the world. Animal testing by Chevron-Texaco is limited to the assessment of skin irritation, but the company’s subsidiary Chevron-Phillips has engaged in an extensive amount of animal testing under the Environmental Protection Agency’s high production volume (HPV) chemical-testing program and has refused to provide basic information about its chemical test plans to the animal protection community or to the public at large.

2005 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 a PETA supporter who holds stock in Chevron-Texaco, a resolution was filed in the fall of 2004, calling on the company 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 its progressively worded “Animal Care and Use Policy,” Chevron-Texaco took a position in opposition to our shareholder resolution. Nonetheless, PETA contacted the company’s corporate secretary in a good-faith effort to establish a constructive dialogue as an alternative to bringing our resolution forward at Chevron’s annual meeting. Despite a constructive teleconference call and indications that Chevron might be amenable to a series of terms proposed by PETA in exchange for the voluntary withdrawal of our resolution, an agreement was never finalized.

PETA’s resolution was brought to a vote at Chevron’s annual meeting in San Ramon, California, on April 27, 2005. More than 46 million shares (3.4 percent) were voted in favor of the resolution, a number large enough to enable us to bring the resolution back in 2006 if we choose to do so. However, we are hopeful that we will be able to resolve these issues with Chevron-Texaco before then.

2006 Resolution: Animal Welfare Policy

In 2006, PETA submitted another resolution to Chevron, 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.v

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.

Chevron published our resolution in its proxy materials, along with its opposition statement advising shareholders to vote against it. When negotiations with Chevron again failed, PETA’s resolution was brought to a vote at Chevron’s annual meeting on April 26, 2006. Nearly 6.4 percent of the shares were voted in favor of the resolution (representing almost 88 millions shares), a number large enough to enable us to reintroduce the resolution in 2007.

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