Whole Foods Market to Pull POM Wonderful Products Off Shelves

LOS ANGELES - In correspondence with a local animal activist yesterday, Whole Foods Market Customer Communications Specialist Jessie Walker said that Whole Foods would pull POM Wonderful products off their shelves nationwide April first unless the company stopped testing on animals. Animal rights activists applauded the move by the progressive grocer.

After being exposed last year as funding cruel and unnecessary animal experiments, in which baby mice were deprived of oxygen and rabbits had their penile arteries severed, POM has seen legal demonstrations at the homes of its executives in Los Angeles as well as a recent claim alleging product tampering on the East Coast, where an anonymous communique stated that 487 bottles of POM juice had been tainted with a gastrointestinal irritant.
(full communique at http://www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/communiques/2006-12-14_pom.htm)

In addition, the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Better Business Bureau has recommended POM Wonderful discontinue its "puffery" and hyperbolic health claims regarding its pomegranate juice. NAD Director Andrea Levine reported that the claims were the strongest she'd ever seen for a food product, yet POM continues to make outrageous claims that its juice benefits cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's disease.

As detailed in a company press release last month, POM vice-president Fiona Possell resigned her position as company spokesperson, acknowledging animal rights activists as the reason for her resignation.