A planned campaign against Unilever, the parent company for Lipton teas, has been canceled by the world's largest animal rights organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), after the company announced it would end testing on animals for its tea. PETA) revealed that piglets used by tea companies in Britain were cut open and left to die in testing on their products. “They were cut open in a cruel experiment, and parts of their intestines were removed while the animals were still alive. At the end of the experiment, the piglets were killed,” PETA UK said in a press statement on the testing. It said that PG Tips, Lyons and Lipton all employed similar testing methods as part of experimenting their products on animals. Ingrid Newkirk, PETA co-founder, added in the same statement that each little piglet suffered in pain and agony after being taken away from their mother upon birth. She said it was “all in the hope that a company who makes tea could find some new angle to sell more of it. “In this particular experiment, piglets had their intestines pulled out of their bodies while they were still alive. Experimenters then divided the intestines into 10 sections and infected them with disease-causing bacteria to see if tea extracts might prevent diarrhoea.” Following the animal testing revelations, PETA prepared to launch an international campaign against Unilever. The company was bombarded with 40,000 appeals and the threat of a global “Lipton/PG tips CruelTEA” campaign. A PETA press release reports that just days before the campaign launch, Unilever announced an immediate worldwide end to animal testing for tea, “Given the leadership role our tea category takes in the area of environmental sustainability and the ethical sourcing of tea, Unilever is committing to no animal testing for our tea and tea-based beverages, with immediate effect.” Unilever now joins cruelty-free companies such as Stash Tea, Luzianne Tea, Twinings, and Honest Tea. BM
