Shareholder Campaign > PPG Industries

PPG Industries is a leading diversified manufacturer that markets a wide range of products and services, including industrial chemicals, sealants, adhesives, and fiberglass. Most of the animal testing at PPG 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. The animal protection community considers PPG to be a serious corporate offender in the HPV chemical-testing program because it attempted to hide its identity while proposing to kill large numbers of animals in toxicity tests.

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 PPG, a resolution was filed in the fall of 2003, calling on the company to do the following:

Issue a policy statement publicly committing to the use of 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 for animal tests

PPG 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. Regrettably, the SEC staff concurred with PPG’s arguments, and PETA’s resolution was never brought to a shareholder vote.

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