Shareholder Campaign > Dow Chemical

Dow Chemical Co. is a major manufacturer of chemical, plastic, and agricultural products. Most of the animal testing at Dow is conducted by the company’s chemical and agro-science divisions, either voluntarily or as part of government-sponsored testing programs, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) high production volume (HPV) chemical-testing program. The animal protection community has considered Dow to be one of the worst corporate offenders in the HPV chemical-testing program, repeatedly proposing to kill large numbers of animals in toxicity tests while ignoring existing data, public comments on its testing proposals, and basic animal welfare provisions put in place to reduce the number of animals killed in this program.

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 Dow, a resolution was filed in the fall of 2003, 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,” Dow took a position in opposition to our shareholder 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. The SEC staff did not concur with any of the company’s arguments and ordered Dow to publish the PETA-sponsored resolution in its shareholder proxy materials.

Subsequent discussions between Dow and PETA’s science advisors resulted in the company’s committing to doing the following:

Participate in at least one in-person, small-group meeting per year with members of PETA’s technical staff to discuss the development, validation, and regulatory acceptance of in vitro testing and PETA’s “Give the Animals 5” program and opportunities for the company to become more proactive in these areas
Not commence any animal testing of chemicals for the EPA HPV chemical-testing program before the expiration of the applicable 120-day EPA comment period and agreeing to consider and discuss with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and PETA their public comments on such testing, when and if applicable

In light of Dow’s willingness to participate in a constructive and ongoing dialogue about these and other HPV-related issues, PETA voluntarily withdrew its shareholder resolution.

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