We believe that animals have rights. They don’t have every right that we have, but they do have the right not to be exploited, abused, and/or killed. Until now, investors didn’t have a place where they could find information about which companies are and are not involved in denying animals these rights. Cruelty Free Investing is a resource for individual investors, institutional investors, and financial advisors. We do not provide advice on which stocks to pick. We provide information that investors and financial advisors can use to make better choices.
Our staff researched every corporation on the three major stock exchanges (NASDAQ, NYSE, AMEX) and put every company into one of two categories – companies that exploit animals, and companies that do not. On each list, you can click on the name of a company, and see how that company uses (or does not use) animals.
The animal exploitation industries represent only about one quarter of all stocks. Most companies don’t use animals, so it is easy to build a stock portfolio of companies from that list. By refusing to purchase stock in companies that actively deny animals their most basic rights, you will send a message that their treatment of animals is wrong.
Many investors would prefer to buy shares of mutual funds than pick individual stocks. Right now there are no mutual funds concerned with animal rights. It is our expectation and hope that the financial industry will use the research on this web site to create funds using the stocks of companies that do not exploit animals. When those funds are created, we will link to them in the Mutual Funds tab in the upper right corner of our site. Plenty of mutual funds are what are known as “socially responsible” investments. These are funds concerned with the environment, human rights, labor rights, etc. Those are all worthy goals, but they are outside the scope of this project.
Evaluation Criteria
We used public information to categorize each company; specifically, we examined each company’s web site, as well as news articles about each company. The companies on our “exploit” list use animals in a variety of ways. For example, they:
- manufacture or serve food or beverage items containing animal products
- manufacture or sell clothing that involves killing or harming animals (e.g., leather or fur)
- manufacture or sell products that use animals for experiments
- breed animals for food production and/or animal testing
Although some companies are indirectly involved in animal exploitation by, for example, lending money to exploitative companies, our “exploit” list includes only companies that are directly involved in denying animals their basic rights.
We have done the best we can with this list, but of course we are not perfect. If you think we have made a mistake, please let us know. Our email is info@crueltyfreeinvesting.org.
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Cruelty Free Investing is a 501c3 non-profit organization, and the information on our web site is free for anyone to use. We keep this site updated, so please check back often.