"Our Company funded an experiment—completed in 2017 and published in the Stapp Car Crash Journal in 2018 with graphic photos—in which at least 27 pigs were acquired alive, killed, and hung by wires extended through their spines as a pendulum slammed into them, purportedly to analyze crash impacts in human beings.1

Our Company’s current animal testing policy in its Integrated Sustainability and Financial Report 2022 states, “Ford’s practice is not to use animals for safety testing nor to ask or fund others to do so on our behalf, unless required by law or where there is not an acceptable alternative for critical safety research.” Our Company also explains that the aforementioned test was “a case of the latter,” meaning this exception in its policy allows for the continuation of similar animal tests not required by law. Our Company’s current policy differs from what it wrote previously, in that it “does not directly conduct or fund development of products that involve live animal testing.”2

Pigs and other animals do not naturally sit upright in car seats, and there are numerous species differences between humans and other animals that make crash tests on animals irrelevant.

Animal crash tests have long been abandoned by other car companies because animal-free research methods are readily available and routinely in use, including sophisticated manikins, advanced computer modeling, and human cadavers.

More than 100,000 concerned consumers have written to our Company to urge an end to its support of animal testing. Actor and Detroit native Lily Tomlin sent a letter calling on our Company to “shift out of reverse” and to “stop equivocating and adopt a clear public policy not to fund, conduct, commission, or support animal testing unless it is explicitly required by law,” which garnered national media attention.3 Car associations around the world have also stated their opposition to crash tests on animals, including the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, and the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa.

To avoid future incidents that may harm our Company’s reputation and to promote the most advanced testing available, we urge shareholders to vote in favor of this sensible resolution."