How Carme Went From Ethical Icon to Enemy

In the eyes of animal rights activists, Carme was a model company. After all, Carme had never conducted product safety tests on animals and had sponsored advertising campaigns publicly opposing the practice. Carme even made donations to animal rights groups, organizations that promote boycotts against firms that conduct tests on animals.

However, guided by recently developed criteria for selecting corporate enemies, one faction of the animal rights movement has made Carme its latest boycott target, placing the Novato-based firm at the center of a new cosmetics industry controversy.

The controversy began to develop when an animal rights group--People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals--began to apply an expanded code of corporate ethics. PETA, which has boycotted cosmetics firms for using animals in product safety tests, this autumn began to ask cosmetics firms to sever commercial relationships with companies that conduct research tests on living creatures.

The first PETA boycott based on this new code was launched in September after International Research & Development, a company that conducts medical research on animals, announced plans to acquire Carme. PETA activists claimed that the Carme leadership showed a lack of principle by accepting an animal laboratory operator as a parent company.

Responding to the buyout plan, PETA sent a letter of protest to Carme and issued a blistering press release on Sept. 5 likening IRDC to “animal mutilation factories” and calling on IRDC to “pull out” to “avoid ethical and economic suicide.”

International Research, based in Mattawan, Mich., already owns 49% of Carme. The buyout plan also disturbed Scott J. Egide, son of Carme’s chief executive. A marketing executive at the company, he resigned in protest and called the deal “intolerable” in a Sept. 1 letter to his father.

“It is a tragedy that a company built by myself and so many others will be destroyed . . . all in the name of greed and profit,” the letter said.

In addition, Scott’s brother, Carme General Manager Mark Egide, resigned Sept. 15. Scott and Mark Egide were not available for comment.

Their father, James Egide, said Mark resigned to accept a position at another cosmetics company, and the elder Egide did not criticize his other son, Scott.

“He (Scott) felt strongly about the matter,” James Egide said.

Reflecting on the developments of the past few months, James Egide bristles when discussing the PETA stand and defends IRDC’s work in biomedical and pharmaceutical research as important and beneficial.

“They (IRDC) look at Carme as an investment,” Egide said. “They like what we’re doing and like the way we operate. PETA believes there should be no animal testing of any kind. I think that’s crazy! If there was no testing, there would be no cure for polio.”

Francis X. Wazeter, chairman of IRDC, is also angry. Wazeter said he may file suit against PETA or other critics of the deal if they continue to “defame” IRDC. He said animals at IRDC are treated humanely. IRDC plans no major changes at Carme and would retain its current management, Wazeter said.

However, animal rights activists said their group is attempting to weaken Carme to make it less appealing to IRDC. PETA persuaded two of Carme’s largest West Coast distributors to join the protests. The two firms vowed not to handle Carme products in the wake of the buyout plan.

Carme President James Egide said he is concerned about the possibility of losing some business but will proceed with plans for a shareholder vote on the buyout proposal from IRDC.

“The animal rights people have their cause and have to do what they think is right . . . and we have to do what we think is right,” he said.