Taiwan FDA Ends Arthritis Tests on Animals

The Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) finalized a regulation that removes animal testing as an option for companies wanting to make human anti-arthritis claims for marketing their food and beverage products. The testing included injecting chemicals into the joints of adolescent rats or severing their joint tissue surgically to induce painful osteoarthritis, after which the rats would be starved for 12 hours and then killed and dissected. The TFDA now requires only safe and effective human tests for this purpose. This decision followed e-mails to agency officials from more than 125,000 supporters of PETA, PETA Asia, and Kindness to Animals, our partner organization in Taiwan, opposing experiments on animals, as well as PETA’s submission of a detailed scientific critique.