Mice Douched, Poisoned in Experiments Aimed at Bigger Blueberry Sales; PETA Says No More

For Immediate Release:
February 20, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

In a new campaign and video released today, PETA slams the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council, the trade group for sales of the fruit, for funding deadly experiments on animals just to make dubious claims about the human health benefits of eating blueberries. PETA demands the council ban all tests on animals. 

The Sacramento-headquartered council has funded tests that include douching, poisoning, force-feeding, starving, irradiating, beheading, and dissecting animals. 

“Tormenting animals in laboratories to sell more blueberries is a disgraceful waste of resources and animals’ lives,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “Hundreds of studies involving humans already show that blueberries are healthy—there’s no need for the Blueberry Council to force even one more animal to die.”

Experimenters funded by the council have restrained rats in plastic tubes and mutilated their brains. In one test, experimenters repeatedly stuffed rats into tubes smeared with cat food while a cat was in the room, to induce post-traumatic stress disorder–like symptoms.

The council also funded an experiment that fed blueberries to rats and then forced them to perform a series of grueling psychomotor and cognitive tests, including hanging by their front paws from a wire-mesh grid until they fell from exhaustion, walking and balancing on accelerating rotating rods, and swimming in a maze. They were repeatedly injected with a chemical and then killed and dissected.

The Hass Avocado Board, the National Mango Board, and the National Watermelon Promotion Board have all adopted policies banning the funding of animal tests after pressure from PETA.

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 PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.