Animals Mutilated for Mangoes: Tell the National Mango Board to End Cruel Tests

PETA has been saying it loud enough for the people in the back to hear, via numerous e-mails and letters to the National Mango Board as well as juicy public advertisements: This fruit organization’s experiments involving force-feeding, killing, and slicing open animals in cruel tests are irrelevant to human health and not required by law. It’s ridiculous that any animal should die in a laboratory because of attempts to boost mango sales to consumers.

Now we’re asking you to urge the National Mango Board to ban senseless, cruel tests on animals, as numerous major food and beverage manufacturers have already done.

Experiments That Are Rotten to the Core

Experimenters funded by the National Mango Board have tormented and killed at least 160 mice and rats in painful and pointless tests, including these:

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

Animal Tests Aren’t Fruitful

The National Mango Board funds such tests in an attempt to promote human health claims for marketing mangoes to consumers. But because humans are vastly different from mice and rats, the results of these tests aren’t reliable and don’t translate to human health.

Mangoes, called the “king of fruits,” are well known for being nutritious and delicious with a long history of safe human consumption. Instead of killing animals in gruesome experiments, researchers could have used safe and effective human studies and other advanced, non-animal methods to yield superior, human-relevant results.

If that weren’t enough, the National Mango Board uses mandatory assessment funds, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture forces farmers to pay to bankroll these animal tests—essentially levying a draconian “tax” against already struggling farming communities. PETA has submitted a petition for rulemaking urging the agency to prohibit the National Mango Board and all other research and promotion boards from using these fees to fund animal testing.

What You Can Do

It doesn’t have to be this way. Following discussions with PETA, the Hass Avocado Board adopted a public policy banning funding or conducting animal tests, as have dozens of major food and beverage manufacturers. It’s time for the National Mango Board to do the same.

Please take action by urging the National Mango Board to adopt a policy against conducting, funding, or commissioning any experiments on animals.

You can do so by sending polite comments to the following members of the board. To contact them with one message, just copy and paste this block of e-mail addresses in the “To” field of your e-mail:

[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Feel free to use our talking points (but remember that using your own words is always more effective):

• Please adopt a public policy that bans conducting, funding, or commissioning any animal tests. Results from such experiments are inaccurate, because there are drastic physiological differences between humans and other species.
• Dozens of major food and beverage manufacturers have already prohibited animal testing to establish human health claims for marketing products and ingredients.
• Mandatory assessment fees paid by farmers shouldn’t be used to fund animal tests that aren’t explicitly required by law.

Then, use the form below to contact other National Mango Board representatives.

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