Celebrate the Mango: A Perfect Fruit That No One Needs to Die For
Mangoes are delicious, nutritious fruits, which are given as a gesture of friendship in some cultures.
On National Mango Day (July 22), PETA is sharing in the celebration of this treat, which humans have cultivated for 5,000 years. In addition to being lovely to eat, one mango provides the following:
- 100% of your recommended daily vitamin C
- 35% of your recommended daily vitamin A
- 12% of your recommended daily fiber
Despite this self-contained perfection, experimenters funded by the National Mango Board have tormented and killed at least 160 mice and rats in painful and pointless tests in attempts to promote human health claims for marketing mangoes to consumers.
For instance, experimenters have done the following:
- Injected mice with cancer cells, repeatedly force-fed them mango extracts, and killed and dissected them
- Fed mice a high-fat diet with mangoes, starved them, taken their blood, and killed and dissected them
- Fed rats mangoes or pomegranates, followed by a chemical that induces colitis, and then killed and dissected them
The tests are pointless violence, since humans have eaten mangoes for thousands of years quite safely. Researchers could have instead used safe and effective human studies yielding superior, human-relevant results.
The results from the animal tests are used in attempts to sell more mangoes by promoting human health claims. But that’s misleading. The effects on a mouse or a rat won’t necessarily apply to a human because of drastic physiological differences between species. Other animals are not good stand-ins for us.
The National Mango Board bankrolls these tests with a mandatory fee on mango farmers, effectively creating a draconian “tax” on struggling farming communities that can hardly afford it.
What You Can Do
Please take a moment to join more than 100,000 other PETA supporters and take action by urging the National Mango Board to stop gouging farmers with fees that fund inhumane, junk-science animal tests.
And if you’re a U.S. resident, please take an additional step by urging members of a U.S. Senate committee to eliminate these fees from the 2023 Farm Bill.
