VICTORY! QTrade Teas and Botanicals Bans All Experiments on Animals After PETA Push
For Immediate Release:
January 26, 2026
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Following talks with PETA scientists, Brookshire-based QTrade Teas and Botanicals has adopted a policy that states it does not “conduct, fund, or commission testing on mice or other animals.”
PETA contacted the company after discovering it had donated to a test in which experimenters force-fed a peanut extract and toxin to genetically modified mice born with a peanut allergy and then bled them from their faces.
“Mice are thinking, feeling beings who value their lives and their families,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA celebrates QTrade Teas and Botanicals’ compassionate move and calls on companies still experimenting on animals to take note and transition to human-relevant research.”
Mice and rats—the most experimented on animals in the U.S.—are complex, unique, and social individuals. Both experience a wide range of emotions and easily bond with their human guardians—returning as much affection as is given to them.
PETA encourages caring consumers to urge Wegmans Food Markets to stop sponsoring an institute that bankrolls experiments, including repeatedly force-feeding animals parasite-infested feces and slicing them open, and adopt state-of-the-art, human-relevant research methods instead.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on or abuse in any other way”—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 PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
