Victory! National Watermelon Board Ends Rotten Animal Tests After PETA Push
Victory! In yet another significant win for animals, a high-pressure PETA campaign has convinced the National Watermelon Promotion Board to stop starving, suffocating, killing, and slicing open animals in cruel, fruitless experiments to promote the sale of watermelons.
In letters to leadership, PETA called out the board for bankrolling the deadly tests on mice and rats. PETA supporters sent a whopping 18,000 e-mails supporting a ban on the tests, and Emmy-award-winning journalist María Celeste Arrarás made a stirring, personal plea to end the rotten testing.
The board responded with a public policy announcement on their website that, in part, reads: “The National Watermelon Promotion Board (NWPB) funds research studies that are based on sound science …. [A]nimal studies … are not acceptable.”
And in its 2025 request for proposals from researchers seeking funding, the board says: “Animal … studies will not be considered.”
PETA applauds the National Watermelon Promotion Board decision that will prevent countless rats and mice from dying in agonizing experiments just to sell a perfectly safe and delicious fruit.
After hearing from PETA, the watermelon board joins the Hass Avocado and National Mango boards, which have also adopted policies banning tests on animals.
PETA’s Campaign
PETA initially contacted the watermelon board in January 2020, urging it to ban the horrific experiments on animals. We continued to contact the board several times but got no response. In March 2023, we ramped up the campaign when a PETA staffer confronted the board during a virtual event. The board really began feeling the heat after receiving thousands of emails from supporters. Then, when María Celeste Arrarás sent the members a letter earlier this month, it was apparently too much to take.
PETA has said all along that tests on animals have never been fruitful since 90% of basic research, most of which involves animals, fails to lead to treatments for humans. And more than 95% of all new drugs that test safe and effective in tests on animals go on to fail in human clinical trials because they don’t work or are dangerous.
An End to the Horror
With this compassionate and correct move, the watermelon board will no longer fund tests on animals like the ones it previously did, including these experiments:
- Force-fed rats watermelon or a watermelon ingredient, injected them with a carcinogen, and killed and dissected them.
- Fed rats an artery-clogging diet with or without watermelon, suffocated them to death, took their blood, and dissected them.
- Fed rats watermelon, repeatedly injected them with a carcinogen that induces colon cancer and killed and dissected them.
- Fed rats a high-fat diet with or without watermelon, fed them a chemical that induces colitis, starved them, suffocated them to death, and dissected them.
- Fed mice a high-fat diet with various parts of the watermelon, starved them, injected them with glucose, repeatedly bled them from their tails, took blood straight from their hearts, killed them by breaking their necks, and dissected them.
What You Can Do
While we praise the watermelon board for its enlightened decision, it is one of many similar boards that continue to experiment on animals in pointless and deadly tests. Please urge other research and promotion boards to ban tests on animals:
