Coca-Cola Shareholders Demand “Bull Zero” Sugar to Stop Cruelty to India’s Bulls & Improve Worker Welfare

For Immediate Release:

1 May 2025

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Mumbai — “When will Coca-Cola honor its sustainable agriculture principles and commit to ‘bull zero,’ or bull-free sugar?” That’s the question the founder of PETA entities worldwide, Ingrid Newkirk, who has long owned stock in Coca-Cola, submitted during the beverage giant’s annual meeting this week. Newkirk has witnessed overloaded carts weighed down with tons of cane and pulled by bullocks who strain, stumble and falter in Maharashtra’s sugarcane industry. The bullocks get beaten, whipped, and forced to keep moving under the blazing hot sun without rest or water. A local NGO, Animal Rahat, has confiscated thousands of wire torture devices used to control the animals. Police action has failed to stop the abuse. Newkirk argues that reliance on slow-moving and inefficient bullock carts also keeps workers in abject poverty.

“Bulls aren’t unfeeling machines, and Coca-Cola has the power to stop them from suffering and being worked to death to sweeten its soft drinks,” says the founder of PETA entities worldwide, Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is calling on Coke to commit to mechanisation to help bulls and workers, which will mean sourcing only bull-free sugar.”

Bulls are highly social animals who form long-lasting, cooperative relationships with their fellow herd members if permitted to do so. Yet in Maharashtra’s sugarcane industry, bulls endure being forced to haul severely overloaded carts, leading to debilitating injuries, including swollen joints, abscesses, muscle tears, and other painful conditions. Many suffer serious wounds from barbed-wire spikes that dig into their faces if they “disobey” by turning their heads, as well a torn nostrils from thick nose ropes.

With PETA’s help, Animal Rahat has worked since 2011 to replace bullock-driven carts with more efficient and cost-effective, mechanised alternatives through its Sugarcane Industry Mechanisation Project. Through the project’s influence, one-third of Maharashtra state’s sugar production has been mechanised. A tractor, capable of transporting 8 to 18 tons per trip, can replace multiple bulls and gives owners improved income opportunities. So far, Coca-Cola has not responded to appeals to use its influence to abate the cruelty and help India’s bulls and workers.

PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

The full text of Newkirk’s shareholder question follows.

My name is Ingrid Newkirk, and I’m the president of PETA and a longtime shareholder. The New York Times revealed our company Coca-Cola’s ties to India’s cruel sugarcane industry, which exploits families of desperately poor migrant workers who depend on bullocks to carry sugarcane to the factories. The bullocks struggle to haul carts illegally overloaded with cane and suffer lameness, painful abscesses, and muscle tears. They are beaten with sticks and whips to keep going when they are exhausted. They suffer wounds from barbed-wire spikes attached to their yokes and facial tears from thick nose ropes. They are literally worked to death. Coca-Cola can do right by bullocks and worker families by sourcing only bull-free sugar. A PETA-supported project replacing bullocks with eco-tractors has already replaced one-third of bullocks in a cane district, sparing them a lifetime of abuse and improving income for workers. When will Coca-Cola honor its sustainable agriculture principles and commit to bull-free sugar?

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