Tea Tested on Animals

The makers of Lipton tea have conducted (or paid others to conduct) painful, invasive tests on animals. Here are some of the details:

• Rabbits were fed a high-fat diet and then given tea to see if it affected the plaque that had formed on the animals' arteries. After the experiment, the rabbits were decapitated.
• Mice were fed tea ingredients to see if they had any effect on bowel inflammation. After the test, experimenters killed the mice by suffocating them or breaking their necks.
• Rats were forced to eat a high-sugar diet, and then tea was given to the animals to see if it had an impact on their sugar-induced brain damage.
• Piglets were infected with E. coli toxin and then fed tea in order to see if the tea affected diarrhea. Experimenters cut the pigs' intestines apart while the animals were still alive.

None of these tests were required by law. In fact, regulators have stated that animal tests are not sufficient to prove a health claim about a product.

Send an e-mail to Dave Lewis, dave.lewis@unilever.com, president of Unilever Americas (Lipton's parent company), and politely ask him to stop testing tea and tea ingredients on animals. If your message can't be delivered, please e-mail the company using its contact form.

Source:

http://blog.peta2.com/2010/12/tea-tested-on-animals-wtf.html

Animals Burned, Mutilated and Neglected at University of Texas

An insider at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) has contacted PETA to report that dogs, monkeys, sheep, goats, ferrets, and mice are being used in cruel experiments in which their bodies are burned, mutilated, and cut open and that these animals are also suffering as a result of inadequate veterinary care, improperly trained staff, careless handling, and severe neglect.

The whistleblower says that experimenter Daniel Traber has subjected sheep, pigs, and mice to third-degree burns on up to 40 percent of their bodies and forced the animals to inhale smoke from burning cotton. UTMB experimenters also intentionally caused spinal cord and sciatic nerve injuries in sheep. One sheep who was subjected to back surgery reportedly could not stand for three days following the surgery and was given no pain relief.

Our source also reports the following:

• UTMB faculty members cut open dogs and surgically implanted tubes into their colons for irritable bowel experiments. One dog reportedly died during surgery, and another died in pain following surgery when staff members did not provide anesthetics and were apparently unable to use the monitoring equipment correctly.
• A macaque monkey—a highly-social being for whom social contact is necessary to maintain physical and mental health—was confined by herself to a stainless steel cage in a room where she had no contact with and no opportunity to see or hear other nonhuman primates.
• Several sheep and one pig suffered serious injuries, including a broken leg and trauma so severe that it caused one sheep's intestines to penetrate her chest cavity.
• Mice died, most likely as a result of dehydration, after staff members failed to notice that the animals did not have access to water.

PETA has repeatedly reached out to UTMB through letters and phone calls in an attempt to discuss these alleged violations with the university directly, but our correspondence and calls have been totally ignored. Now, PETA has filed an urgent complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture calling for an immediate investigation.

You can also be a voice for the animals at UTMB. Please take a minute of your time today to urge UTMB President David L. Callender to immediately conduct a thorough investigation of the university's laboratories and dismiss any employees whose incompetence, negligence, or outright cruelty are found to have contributed to increased pain and misery for animals.

https://secure.peta.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3523

Tell the Makers of Lipton Tea to Stop Torturing Animals

Before taking your next sip of tea, check the label on the tea box or bottle because you might be drinking a cupful of cruelty to animals. The company behind Lipton tea has been testing and paying others to test tea—a beverage that has been consumed for thousands of years—on animals. The tea giant has caused animals to suffer and die simply to investigate the possible health benefits linked to its tea products and ingredients, even though regulators have stated that animal tests are not sufficient to prove a health claim about a product.

In these cruel and painful tests, rabbits, mice, rats, and piglets were tortured and then killed by decapitation and suffocation, among other methods. Following are more of the horrific details about what happened to the animals who were used in the company's experiments:

• Rabbits were fed a high-fat and high-cholesterol diet, leading to extreme hardening of their arteries. They were then fed tea to see if it could reduce the lesions that formed on their arteries. After the test, experimenters cut off the rabbits' heads.
• Mice who were bred to suffer from a painful bowel inflammation were fed tea ingredients in order to see if the ingredients had any effect on the animals' condition. After the test, experimenters killed the mice by suffocating them and breaking their necks.
• Rats were forced to eat a high-sugar diet, and then tea was given to the animals to see if it could protect against sugar-induced brain damage. Other rats had their abdominal wall punctured and were fed radioactively labeled tea ingredients through a tube in their stomachs to examine the absorption of tea in the body. Then they were killed, frozen with liquid nitrogen, and crushed.
• Piglets were exposed to E. coli toxin and then fed tea in order to see if the tea could prevent fluid loss and diarrhea. As part of the tests, experimenters cut the pigs' intestines apart while the animals were still alive. The piglets were then killed.

Modern, cruelty-free research methods are available and in use by other leading beverage companies around the world. We need YOU to join us in telling the maker of Lipton to ditch its crueltea to animals and use non-animal methods instead.

Please take a moment to ask the maker of Lipton to stop testing on animals and join Honest Tea, Twinings, Stash Tea, Luzianne Tea, and other tea companies that don't experiment on animals.

http://action.petaasiapacific.com/ea-campaign/clientcampaign.do?ea.client.id=110&ea.campaign.id=8959