Taiwan FDA Ends Bone Health 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 bone health claims for marketing their food and beverage products. The testing included cutting out the ovaries of mice, rats, or hamsters and feeding them a calcium-deficient diet to induce osteoporosis, feeding or force-feeding them the test food, and killing and dissecting them. The TFDA now requires only safe and effective human tests for this purpose. This decision followed e-mails to agency officials from more than 28,000 PETA supporters opposing experiments on animals.