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Dayton Business Journal...
PETA
proposes Procter & Gamble
stop animal testing
by DBJ Staff
Friday, July 8, 2011
Owners
of Procter & Gamble Co.
stock will have an opportunity to vote on a couple of new shareholder
proposals
at this year’s annual meeting, including one by PETA calling for
P&G to
stop animal testing at labs in Dayton and Preble County.
The
gathering will take place on Oct.
11 at 9 a.m. at the Aronoff Center downtown, according to a preliminary
proxy
P&G filed this week.
In
addition to a repeat proposal that
would authorize cumulative voting, submitted once again by Evelyn Davis
of
Washington, D.C., shareholders will also consider a proposal by People
for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to stop the use of animals in
laboratories
for testing Iams pet products.
In
addition to Iams, which was founded
in Dayton, Cincinnati-based P&G (NYSE: PG) is the parent of
well-known
consumer brands like Tide, Downy, Pampers and Crest.
P&G
shareholders also vote on a
proposal dealing with the disclosure of campaign contributions put
forward by
Boston-based Northstar Asset Management Inc .
The
Northstar proposal, if passed,
would recommend to P&G’s board that each year’s proxy list
“specific
electioneering expenditures” made in the prior fiscal year along with
any
anticipated in the year ahead. It also seeks a statement on
management’s
analysis “of the congruency of those expenditures with company values.”
It
defines “expenditures for electioneering” as any spending reasonably
susceptible
to being interpreted as support for or opposition to a specific
candidate.
PETA’s
statement in support of its
proposal contends that more than 450 dogs and cats are confined to
P&G labs
in Dayton and Lewisburg. Citing information provided to PETA by a
former Iams
lab employee, the statement said the dogs are “confined for more than
23 hours
a day, subjected to frequent blood draws, forced to sleep on cement
floors ...
and denied normal lives and loving families.”
The
PETA resolution seeks to phase out
Iams’s lab testing by the end of 2011 and instead rely “entirely on
humane
testing methods with companion animals in their own homes.”
Davis’s
cumulative voting proposal –
passage of which could make it easier to elect directors not nominated
by the
board – got about 25 percent of the vote at last year’s annual meeting.
Among
the reasons she cites, according to the proxy, is that a director
elected
through cumulative voting “might be more inclined to vote for rotating
the
annual meetings to locations other than Cincinnati from time to time.”
P&G’s
preliminary proxy statement
did not include company responses or recommendations on any of the
shareholder
proposals. They will be included in a definitive proxy to be issued in
the
coming months.
The
preliminary proxy likewise did not
include any figures on executive compensation paid in P&G’s
fiscal year
that ended June 30.
P&G
competes with other consumer
products makers such as Kimberly-Clark Corp. and Johnson &
Johnson , which
has a subsidiary in southwest Ohio.
Read
it at the Dayton Business Journal
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