Do you take your tea with a dash of blood? How about a spoonful of dead mouse? PETA's new parody of a Nestea commercial from the '80s shows viewers why they should avoid the brand and "take the CruelTEA plunge":

Nestea insists on testing on mice and rats in an attempt to make health claims—despite the fact that U.S. and European regulators have stated that tests on animals are not sufficient to prove health claims about food and beverage products. One test involved locking highly social mice in dark chambers and painfully shocking their sensitive feet. In another test, experimenters injected mice with chemicals to make them develop diabetes and then force-fed them tea ingredients.

Share the new ad on Facebook and Twitter to urge everyone you know to "take the CruelTEA plunge" by pledging to drink only cruelty-free tea. Please also click here to urge Nestea to stop testing on animals. Unless you want to quench a thirst for cruelty, Nestea is one brand to avoid like the plague.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan

We are thrilled to announce that after more than 40,000 supporters of PETA and its affiliates around the world sent e-mails urging Unilever to stop testing tea on animals and after representatives from PETA and our affiliates in India and Europe flew to London to meet with Unilever—the world's largest tea maker, which makes the Lipton and PG Tips brands—the company agreed to halt all such tests. In a message just posted on its website, Unilever states, "Unilever is committing to no animal testing for our tea and tea-based beverages, with immediate effect."

Thanks to everyone who responded to our online action alert, no more piglets will be infected with E. coli toxin and have their intestines cut apart while they are still alive, no more rats will have holes cut into their intestines and be fed tea ingredients through a tube in their throats, mice won't be suffocated or have their necks broken, rabbits' heads won't be cut off, and other cruel tests that involved tormenting and killing animals simply to study the health effects of tea products and ingredients will no longer take place.

Not one of the experiments that the company conducted was legally required for beverage makers, and regulators have stated that animal tests are not required to prove a health claim about a product.

With this victory, the suffering of animals for Lipton and PG tips teas ends. Lipton joins many other tea and beverage companies—including Stash Tea, Luzianne Tea, Twinings, Honest Tea, Ocean Spray, Welch's, POM Wonderful, and Japan-based tea giant ITO EN—in being cruelty-free.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

mourner/CC by 2.0

UPDATE: Unilever—the the world's largest tea maker, which makes the Lipton and PG Tips brands—has agreed to halt all animal tests. Please read here for more info.

If you're sipping Lipton, it was. The makers of Lipton tea have conducted (or paid others to conduct) painful, invasive tests on hundreds of animals—possibly more. Here are some of the details: 

• Rabbits were fed a high-fat diet and then given tea to see if it affected the plaque that had formed on the animals' arteries. After the experiment, the rabbits were decapitated.
• Mice were fed tea ingredients to see if they had any effect on bowel inflammation. After the test, experimenters killed the mice by suffocating them or breaking their necks.
• Rats were forced to eat a high-sugar diet, and then tea was given to the animals to see if it had an impact on their sugar-induced brain damage.
• Piglets were infected with E. coli toxin and then fed tea in order to see if the tea affected diarrhea. Experimenters cut the pigs' intestines apart while the animals were still alive.

None of these tests were required by law. In fact, regulators have stated that animal tests are not sufficient to prove a health claim about a product.

Please take a moment and urge the makers of Lipton to stop the crueltea to animals and to use modern, non-animal testing methods instead, just as Honest Tea, Stash, Twinings, Luzianne, and other tea companies already do.

Written by Alisa Mullins

Pop quiz: For the creation and testing of which of the following types of consumer products do some companies still force animals to suffer in invasive and deadly laboratory experiments?

1. A. Cigarettes
2. B. Dog food
3. C. Tea and other beverages
4. D. All of the above
5. E. None of the above

If you answered "D," you're correct! But here's an important update: After more than two years of behind-the-scenes discussions with PETA, Japan's ITO EN, Ltd., the world's largest manufacturer of green tea—with more than $3 billion in annual sales and ranked by Deloitte among the top 250 global consumer-product companies—has recently gotten out of the animal-testing business. Writing to us, the company said, "[W]e have decided to stop animal tests on our beverages and foods, considering recent movement and circumstances in other countries on this subject."

http://www.flickr.com/photos/art-sarah/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

We're happy to report that the new policy prohibits all animal testing and makes ITO EN the first major Japanese company that we know of to do so, proving that no animal must be killed in order to make safe and healthy food products.

ITO EN joins other progressive companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Ocean Spray, Welch's, POM Wonderful, and others who have recently ended animal testing after discussions with PETA.

Please thank ITO EN for its responsible and compassionate decision to ban animal tests, and then learn how you can become a more caring consumer.

Written by Karin Bennett

P.S. Always remember that for every product you can imagine—including dog food, cigarettes, and, yes, even drinks—there are versions that aren't tested on animals.

MSNBC just reported on a study which showed that the beneficial effects of tea are cancelled out when you put milk in it. According to MSN:

Since I quit smoking about three years ago, I've been drinking, like, five cups of tea a day to fill the void, but I've totally been cheating death by using soymilk instead of cow's milk. Which, you know, hooray for getting one over on Death, but the underlying point here is that cow's milk is designed for baby cows, not for one's Earl Grey or English Breakfast.

While I'm on the subject—ever since I moved to the U.S., I've noticed that a lot of people here don't always bring their water to a full boil before pouring it on their tea. WTF is that all about? For a proper cup of tea, you need to use boiling water to activate the tea leaves, and then let it steep for at least a minute. Then, if you don't want to drop dead from a heart attack right there on the spot, skip the cow's milk and have some soymilk with that bad boy. At any rate, that's how I do it.

Stay tuned for more scintillating tea tips next week. I have a lot to say on this subject.