PETA Launches Campaign Against MSG Giant Over Horrific Tests on Dogs, Others

Group Calls On Ajinomoto Co. to Join Kellogg Company, Kikkoman, Kirin Holdings, and Dozens of Others in Banning Archaic Animal Experiments

For Immediate Release:
October 23, 2019

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA is launching an international campaign today to push Japanese conglomerate Ajinomoto Co., Inc.—the world’s largest manufacturer of the controversial flavor enhancer monosodium glutamate (MSG) and the owner of popular packaged frozen food brands Tai Pei, Ling Ling, and José Olé—to stop conducting cruel and deadly experiments on dogs and other animals and join the dozens of major food companies that, after talking with PETA, have banned tests on animals for establishing health claims to market products and ingredients.

New leaflets—which PETA’s affiliate PETA Asia will distribute near Ajinomoto’s headquarters in Tokyo and its facility in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia—reveal that since the 1950s, Ajinomoto experimenters have cut open dogs’ stomachs, inserted tubes, starved them, fed them MSG, taken their stomach fluid, and injected them with drugs. They’ve also fed rabbits a common amino acid, starved them, repeatedly taken their blood, and then killed and dissected them. Recent experiments involved electroshocking rats, forcing mice to fight each other, injecting them with drugs, drawing their blood, and killing and dissecting them.

“Cutting open dogs, starving rabbits, and electroshocking rats is horrific and wasteful and doesn’t benefit human health,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA calls on Ajinomoto to join the growing industry movement to ban crude and failed animal tests and instead use modern, animal-free methods.”

Experiments using common food ingredients with no toxicity concerns can be safely conducted on human beings—and the results would be directly relevant to human health. Numerous studies of this kind, as well as those using in vitro and other sophisticated, non-animal methods, have already been conducted and published.

While numerous food-industry leaders—including General Mills, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, House Foods, Yakult Honsha, Meiji Holdings, Toyo Suisan Kaisha, Nissin Foods, and dozens of others—have ended animal tests after discussions with PETA, Ajinomoto has refused to engage with the group’s scientists.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.

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