Shareholder Campaign > ExxonMobil

ExxonMobil is one of the largest energy and petrochemical companies in the world. Most of the animal testing at Exxon is conducted by the company’s chemical division, either voluntarily or as part of government-sponsored testing programs, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s high production volume (HPV) chemical-testing program. Unlike other corporate sponsors of the HPV chemical-testing program, Exxon created test plans that were relatively thoughtful and made some attempts to avoid the use of new animal tests. However, Exxon also belongs to the American Petroleum Institute (API), which has repeatedly proposed killing large numbers of animals in chemical-toxicity tests while ignoring existing data and public comments.

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 Exxon, 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

Exxon 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 dialogue as an alternative to bringing our resolution forward at Exxon’s annual meeting. The resulting discussion was both informative and constructive, and in exchange for an ongoing, productive dialogue with Exxon on these issues and other API-related matters, PETA voluntarily withdrew its shareholder resolution.

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