Melissa Giaimo
Assistant Perspectives Editor
POM Wonderful, the hip pomegranate juice company that markets – for $3.29 a bottle – a healthy boost of antioxidants in its signature, sleek, curvy container is in under fire for animal testing. Although POM should seek alternative methods, animal testing is acceptable if conducted ethically for a necessary purpose.
But POM uses torturous and unnecessary methods to test the effects of pomegranate juice, according to PETA, part of its “POM Horrible Campaign.”
PETA accuses POM of researching the health benefits of its product by dissecting the brains of mice, severing arteries of rabbits to study erectile dysfunction and also inducing heart disease in mice that they fed POM to before dissecting their hearts.
However in an article in The Malibu Times, POM Wonderful counters that it participates in minimal animal testing that is necessary to learn the human health benefits of pomegranate juice.
Further, POM charges that PETA uses inappropriate lobbying methods and that it is associated with radical animal rights groups, such as Animal Rights Militia, a British group formed in the 1980s that uses violent measures to support its cause.
Of course, needless and unethical animal testing is offensive. Animal pain is often unwarranted because it does not always accurately demonstrate a product’s effect on humans. The ineffectiveness of animal testing and its lack of public approval are forcing researchers to pursue scientifically valid alternatives, such as using human volunteers.
More than 20 big name competitors of POM, including Welch’s, Ocean Spray, Naked, Sunny Delight, Safeway, Sunsweet and V8 have sworn off animal testing. If these other companies have found alternatives, then POM Wonderful can too. However, PETA detracts from its ethical case by equating animals with people and by taking an extreme stance on animal protection. At the core of PETA’s cause is the belief that because animals suffer, they are not different from humans. This false premise leads to the non sequitur that animal cruelty is as morally reprehensible as human cruelty.
Humans might be animals, but animals are not people. The capacity to feel pain does not render animals the same legal rights as humans; they are not citizens protected by the Constitution. However, humans have a moral obligation to treat them
ethically.
Members of PETA oppose all forms of animal “cruelty,” which also includes using animals for food or clothing. To PETA, a butcher carving an animal to sell as food is morally identical to a researcher decapitating an animal to cure disease.
But purposeful, human killing of animals is ethical. The killing of animals is justified if it meets a vital need, such as food or health and is conducted humanely.
Animal rights groups also diminish their arguments through unprofessional lobbying methods. Last month, the Animal Rights Militia started a scare with its hoax Internet posting claiming to have contaminated 487 bottles of POM in retail stores on the East Coast. A company executive at POM resigned in December following harassment from animal rights groups, according to The Malibu Times.
“POM holds PETA responsible for the fringe groups that take extremist actions,” said Seth Faison, counsel for POM, told The Malibu Times. “When they say ‘we’re just doing our campaign and this has nothing to do with us,’ we don’t believe that. We think they’re affiliated.”
PETA denies such accusations.
Prominent on PETA’s Web site features a statement from the once Playboy playmate Pamela Anderson.
“Considering the cruel experiments on animals that POM is funding, I’m calling on everyone to get Naked instead,” Anderson said referring to POM’s fruit juice competitor Naked.
Ironically, this is not the first time Anderson called on the world to get naked. In April 1997, while Anderson was guest-hosting “Saturday Night Live,” she made a similar appeal.
“You know, if you’re nervous on stage, you actually should be naked!” Anderson said in the skit before beginning a striptease.
Anderson’s graphic video on her Web site exposing animal torture harkens to her last graphic video posting when a stolen pornographic video of Anderson with then-husband Tommy Lee Jones was posted on the Internet.
Is Pamela Anderson the best PETA can do? When did she become the moral conscience for America telling people how to behave ethically? It is no surprise that PETA’s Web site does not mention Anderson’s claim to fame – Playboy magazine.
Malibu Country Mart’s John’s Garden, a sandwich and health food snack shop, is right to boycott POM Wonderful products if POM participates in unnecessary, inhumane animal testing.
However, John’s Garden should boycott POM after its own confirmation of the facts about POM, not on the word of PETA, because PETA is opposed to virtually half the products sold in its grocery store, including all deli meats.
01-18-2007
