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

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