BRIAN DAVIES FOUNDATION INVESTED IN VIVISECTION
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:
LONDON, England––At deadline ANIMAL
PEOPLE was still awaiting International Fund for Animal
Welfare founder Brian Davies’ response to allegations by the
British Broadcasting Corporation expose series Public Eye
that as much as 39% of the Brian Davies Foundation stock
portfolio may be invested with firms that either do vivisection
or are under boycott by other major animal and habitat pro-
tection groups. ANIMAL PEOPLE had, however, received
IFAW’s apparently accidental fax transmission of our request
for comment with four handwritten notes scrawled across it
by at least three different people, discussing how to respond.
The Brian Davies Foundation is a holding corpora-
tion affiliated with IFAW, the sole purpose of which appears
to be managing investments.
IFAW, now under fire for announcing it would not
oppose a plan that could lead to the resumption of commer-
cial whaling (see page one), was just two months ago riding
the crest of outrage over the Canadian sale of 50,000 seal
penises to the Asian aphrodisiac trade––which full-page ads
placed by IFAW in leading Canadian newspapers accurately
linked to child prostitution in Southeast Asia. The issue was
and may still be the hottest for Davies and IFAW since 1983,
when Canada suspended the offshore slaughter of infant harp
seals (though the land-based phase of the killing continues).
Reluctant to seemingly help the wrong side, Public
E y e and ANIMAL PEOPLE delayed airing the allegations
about IFAW financial matters until after this year’s seal hunt
ended. ANIMAL PEOPLE became involved when
approached by the BBC team for investigative help.
The BBC expose included the first public revelation
since 1989 of the size of Davies’ compensation, along with
that of his close associates. This has long been mysterious
because many of the 14 IFAW affiliates are not required to
file tax returns in the U.S., and those that do file list various
amounts for Davies as “part-time.” However, documents
obtained by Public Eye show Davies received at least
$174,558 in 1993. IFAW executive director Richard Moore
received $126,974. In 1989 Davies acknowledged paying
himself $138,000 and his wife $32,000. “It’s what I’m worth,”
he told Steve Wilson of Fox Television.
An even more revealing document obtained by
Public Eye showed that between July 1, 1990, and June 30,
1991, the Brian Davies Foundation earned $214,494 in stock
sales, $83,134 of which involved companies that either spon-
sor vivisection or were under boycott for other reasons per-
taining to animal and habitat protection. The IFAW non-
response to our inquiry left unclear whether these sales were
part of deliberate divestment in conflicts of interest, or part of
an ongoing pattern.
Nearly $28,000 came from the sale of U.S. Surgical
holdings, whose aggressive involvement in financing anti-
animal rights activity had already been public knowledge for
more than a year, and whose use of dogs in terminal product
demonstrations had been a public issue since 1980.
Other holdings deeply involved in vivisection
included Merck Pharmaceuticals (then 6th in corporate labora-
tory animal use); Eastman Kodak (9th); Abbott Laboratories
(29th); Upjohn (32nd); Great Lakes Chemical Corp, (49th);
and Bausch and Laumb, owners of Charles River
Laboratories––the world’s largest supplier of animals for vivi-
section. The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
has recently charged Charles River’s British affiliate with
importing monkeys under particularly brutal conditions.
The Brian Davies Foundation also made $18,000
from the sale of shares in Philip Morris, whose four decades
of animal experimentation while trying to defend cigarette
smoking are subject of an ongoing Congressional probe.
Other holdings included Wal-Mart, under boycott
by PETA since 1988 for selling live animals; Waste
Management, which has been fined more than $50 million for
environmental violations; and McDonald’s, then under boy-
cott by London Greenpeace and now also by the Beyond Beef
Coalition. The foundation sold the McDonald’s stock at a
loss, and also sold stock in Heinz at a loss. It was unclear
whether the Heinz stock was acquired before or after the firm
was boycotted briefly by Earth Island Institute and other
groups in early 1990 for buying tuna netted “on dolphin.”
Although IFAW has rarely addressed vivisection,
Davies wrote to ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett
on July 28, 1988, that, “My intuition is telling me that if
IFAW does not play a role in the anti-vivisection issue, we
will become irrelevant within the humane movement.”
