USDA Punts, Says Ag Boards Must Decide on Animal Testing

For Immediate Release:
August 16, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Vice President Shalin Gala regarding yesterday’s decision by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to deny PETA’s request for a rule change that would have prohibited government-funded agricultural boards from commissioning or funding experiments on animals. The USDA’s denial noted that agricultural research and promotion boards can ban animal testing themselves:

Not one more animal needs to suffer and die in laboratories to market commonplace foods. The numerous agricultural research and promotion boards, appointed by the USDA, must make quick work of ending pointless and deadly experiments on animals now that the agency has punted that responsibility to them.

PETA is calling on these boards—the National Watermelon Promotion Board, the Mushroom Council, the United Sorghum Checkoff Program, the United Soybean Board, the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council, and the Washington Red Raspberry Commission—to follow the examples set by the National Mango Board and the Hass Avocado Board and immediately adopt public policies against animal tests.

Rep. Dina Titus, joined by national Black farming advocacy organizations, have also demanded an end to this draconian tax on farmers, who are forced to pay for animal tests that don’t help them sell their products.

Tests have included force-feeding animals and then starving them, inducing colitis, forcing them to run on treadmills, suffocating them, and then killing and dissecting them. Examples can be found here.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.