Victory! National Mango Board’s Seedy Tests on Rats and Mice End Following Pressure From PETA

Sweet, sweet victory! The National Mango Board will no longer support starving, killing, and slicing open animals in cruel, pointless experiments. This decision follows a high-pressure campaign from PETA, which included letters, thousands of e-mails from our supporters, and juicy public advertisements calling out the board for funding the torment of mice and rats apparently just to boost mango sales.

Mutilating Mice for Mango Marketing?

The mango research and promotion board, appointed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), previously used and killed at least 160 mice and rats in experiments to promote dubious human health claims about mangoes, a fruit that humans have safely eaten for thousands of years. Tests funded by the board included the following:

• Experimenters injected mice with cancer cells, repeatedly force-fed them mango extracts, and killed and dissected them.
• Experimenters fed mice a high-fat diet with mangoes, starved them, took their blood, and killed and dissected them.
• Experimenters fed rats mangoes or pomegranates, gave them a chemical that induces colitis, and killed and dissected them.
• Experimenters fed rats mangoes, gave them a chemical that induces colitis, and killed and dissected them.
• Experimenters fed rats mango juice, repeatedly gave them a chemical that induces colitis, and killed and dissected them.

The Juicy Details: PETA’s Campaign to End the Mango Board’s Experiments

PETA began contacting the mango board and other similar research and promotion boards in 2017 about their funding of cruel animal tests for agricultural products. PETA’s seven-year mango board campaign included the following: letters to the board’s leadership; complaints from PETA, Rep. Dina Titus, and national advocacy groups for Black and other underserved minority farmers to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture; a petition for rulemaking to the U.S. Department of Agriculture; the submission of formal comments concerning the 2023 Farm Bill; a digital, mobile billboard, newspaper and social media ad blitz; and a delivery of a “Mice Are Nice” mug and an empathy kit to the board’s chair.

The board announced the lifesaving change on its website with a new public policy:

The National Mango Board does not fund research studies involving animals … and has no plans to do so in the future.”—National Mango Board

PETA’s been saying all along that tests on animals have never been fruitful. The most recent independent study shows that 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 animal tests go on to fail in human clinical trials—most because they don’t work or actually turn out to be dangerous.

The Core of the Issue

While the board’s decision will prevent countless rats and mice from dying in agonizing experiments, animals are still being used in fruitless experiments by other agricultural product research and promotion boards. Tell these boards and the USDA to stop funding these rotten experiments on animals: