VIDEO: PETA Launches Campaign Against National Mango Board Over Deadly Animal Tests

For Immediate Release:
April 10, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

In a new video released today, PETA slams the National Mango Board (NMB) for funding deadly experiments on animals just to make dubious claims about the human health benefits of eating mangoes. PETA is demanding that the board ban all tests on animals not specifically required by law.

In addition to releasing the video, PETA sent a letter to Albert Perez, chair of the NMB, urging him to follow the lead of numerous major food and beverage manufacturers by enacting a policy banning all pointless and cruel tests on animals. The group also submitted a petition for rulemaking, available in full here, to the U.S. Department of Agriculture calling on the agency to prohibit research and commodity boards, such as the NMB and others, from using farmers’ required payments to the boards to fund animal testing.

“No matter how you slice it, mutilating mice to make unreliable marketing claims about the effect of eating mangoes on human health is a waste of resources and animals’ lives,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA is upping the pressure on the National Mango Board to publicly and unequivocally ban experiments on animals and rely instead on human-relevant research to make human health claims.”

NMB-funded experimenters have injected mice with cancer cells, alternatively starved and force-fed them, and induced colitis in rats. At the end of such experiments, the animals are killed and dissected. Thousands of animals have been killed in experiments funded by food research and promotion boards, including the NMB, the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council, The Mushroom Council, the National Watermelon Promotion Board, the United Sorghum Checkoff Program, and the United Soybean Board.

After hearing from PETA and receiving e-mails from more than 85,000 consumers, the Hass Avocado Board—which once funded experiments in which animals were force-fed, starved, bled, suffocated, and dissected—adopted a public policy stating that it “does not support, fund, or conduct animal research.”

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.