Group Puts Squeeze on Juicemaker as National ‘POM Horrible’ Campaign Over Company’s Deadly Animal Tests Kicks Off in L.A.

Los Angeles — A PETA member wearing a white lab coat soaked with fake blood will mockingly kill an activist in a bunny costume, who will be hung upside-down from scaffolding outside the headquarters of pomegranate-juice maker POM Wonderful in Los Angeles on Thursday. Other PETA members will hold giant posters that read, "POM Kills Animals," and are emblazoned with a blood-dripping spoof of POM’s logo. The action marks the launch of PETA’s national "POM Horrible" campaign, which will last as long as POM continues to fund painful and deadly experiments on rabbits and mice.

· Experimenters caused severe brain damage to week-old mouse pups—whose mothers had been fed pomegranate juice—and then decapitated the babies and studied their brains.
· Experimenters severed the arteries of rabbits in a bizarre attempt to show that drinking pomegranate juice might alleviate erectile dysfunction.

More than 20 of POM’s competitors—including pomegranate-juice makers Naked Juice, Old Orchard, Lakewood, and Frutzzo—have signed PETA’s statement of assurance affirming that they do not and will not fund animal tests, and Welch’s recently stopped funding animal tests after PETA contacted the company. PETA has already begun contacting health-food store owners nationwide, and many are reconsidering their sale of POM products after learning about the cruel animal experiments.