National Watermelon Board Ends Experiments on Animals After PETA Push

A high-pressure PETA campaign has convinced the National Watermelon Promotion Board to stop starving, suffocating, killing, and slicing open animals in experiments to promote the sale of watermelons. In letters to its leadership, PETA called out the board for bankrolling the deadly tests on mice and rats. PETA supporters sent 18,000 e-mails urging a ban on the tests, and Emmy-award-winning journalist María Celeste Arrarás made a personal plea to end the testing. The board responded with a public policy announcement on their website that, in part, reads: “The National Watermelon Promotion Board (NWPB) funds research studies that are based on sound science …. [A]nimal studies … are not acceptable.”