PETA Statement: Leading MSG-Maker Misleads About Deadly Animal Tests, Unlike Competitors

For Immediate Release:
November 18, 2021

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see PETA Vice President Shalin Gala’s statement regarding recent animal experiments supported by Ajinomoto Co., Inc., despite the company’s assurances to the contrary:

Despite assurances that Ajinomoto Co., Inc., the world’s leading maker of MSG, made during a recent annual meeting that it would not test on animals for nonmedicinal foods, three new studies prove that it continues to support horrific, animal-killing experiments indiscriminately.

The company conducted an experiment testing essential amino acids—which are present in just about any food, medicinal or not—in which experimenters drilled holes into the skulls of genetically altered mice, injected viral substances into their brains, force-fed them amino acids, took their blood, and killed and dissected them. Ajinomoto also contributed materials to another test in which experimenters repeatedly deprived mice of water overnight, fed them common food substances such as miso and MSG, cut open their faces to expose a nerve, inserted electrodes into their faces, killed them, and cut off their tongues. In yet another test to which Ajinomoto donated materials, experimenters mated pigs, fed the mothers common amino acids, cut them open and took their uteri and babies, and then killed and dissected the babies.

These animals endured horrendous torment so that Ajinomoto could enhance its bottom line. They suffered and died for nothing more than profit, in tests not even required by law. Ajinomoto, a company with a long history of harming dogs and other animals, must immediately get on the right side of history and listen to the more than 230,000 people who have called on it to join the dozens of global food companies—including MSG competitors like McCormick & Company and B&G Foods—that have banned animal tests after discussions with PETA.

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