DowDuPont ends fungicide dog experiment amid public pressure

DowDupont’s agriculture business, Corteva Agriscience, has ended its one-year fungicide toxicity experiment on dogs at Charles River Laboratories in Michigan, US, amid pressure from the Humane Society of the US. The animal rights group released undercover footage on 12 March showing beagles being force-fed the product over a period of several months.

The Humane Society also circulated an online petition urging the company to stop the experiment and release the 36 beagles involved, which were due to be euthanised in July. The petition garnered more than 300,000 signatures.

Corteva explained that its products are sold in in Brazil, where the tests were required to comply with regulations. However, these experiments are not deemed necessary in other regulatory domains, and Corteva had been campaigning to change Brazil’s requirement before the Humane Society’s investigation.

‘We have been actively advocating with Brazil’s Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária (Anvisa) to amend its requirements for animal testing with pesticides and today we received official confirmation that the tests we were seeking to change are no longer required for our product,’ Corteva stated on 18 March. ‘We have immediately ended the study and will make every effort to rehome the animals.’

Corteva said that the waiver from Brazil for the pesticide test is the result of the ongoing work that Dow and DuPont have done to refine, reduce, and replace animal tests wherever possible.

Meanwhile, earlier this month DowDuPont finalised the timeline of its plan to split into three independent businesses. The materials science division will become the new Dow on 1 April. Corteva Agriscience is expected to separate from the new DuPont – the speciality products unit – on 1 June.