Candy company kills animals

I just found about how Mars Inc., makers of M&M's, Snickers, and Starburst amongst other candies is doing cruel experiments on animals.

Some of the experiments they are doing are:

• Mars is currently funding an experiment on rats at the University of California, San Francisco, to determine the effect of chocolate ingredients on the animals' blood vessels, even though the experimenter admits that studies have already been done using humans. Experimenters force-feed the rats by shoving plastic tubes down their throats and then cut open the rats' legs to expose an artery, which is clamped shut to block blood flow. After the experiment, the animals are killed.

• Mars funded a deadly experiment on mice that was published in a 2007 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience in which mice were fed flavanols (phytochemicals that are found in chocolate) and forced to swim in a pool of water mixed with white paint to hide a submerged platform, which the mice had to find in order to avoid drowning, only to be killed and dissected later on.

• In one experiment supported by Mars and conducted by the current Mars, Inc., endowed chair in developmental nutrition at the University of California, Davis, rats were fed cocoa and anesthesized with carbon dioxide so that blood could be collected by a needle injected directly into the heart—a procedure criticized by U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher Dr. William T. Golde, who notes: “This is not a simple method. … Missing the heart or passing the needle completely through the heart could lead to undetected internal bleeding or other complications.”

Information taken from http://marscandykills.com/

These type of things really bother me. I don't like people miss treating animals (or people for that matter). While personally I don't eat very much candy, I am not going to buy any of the candy made by Mars Inc. until they stop their unnecessary killing of animals. Candy is not made for animal consumption and there are differences between humans and animals. While I do realize that scientific study is necessary in some instances this is not one of those instances. Hershey doesn't do animal testing.

Beyond the animal testing the company really upsets me in that they are lying about doing them. If you call up there consumer care number, 1-800-627-7852, they say that they do not do or support animal testing. There is plenty of evidence showing that they do. Reuters, Peta, and several scientific journals all say that they do.

There was a comment on this that I accidentally deleted that said Please sign petition to tell Mars Inc. to stop animal testing!