After Pressure From PETA, Hass Avocado Board Bans Animal Testing

After hearing from PETA and more than 85,000 of our supporters, the Hass Avocado Board (HAB)—one of the major agricultural commodity research and promotion boards that’s overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture—has adopted a new public policy stating that it “does not support, fund, or conduct animal research.” HAB previously sponsored experiments on animals in a purported attempt to make dubious health claims for marketing avocados to consumers. For instance, it funded an experiment in which mice were repeatedly force-fed an avocado ingredient, starved for eight hours, injected with glucose and insulin, bled from their tails, killed by suffocation, and then drained of their blood and dissected.