Siouxsie Sioux, PETA U.K. Push Japanese MSG Giant Ajinomoto to End Cruel Animal Tests

For Immediate Release:
February 2, 2023

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Two decades after Siouxsie and the Banshees’ historic final concert in Tokyo, British post-punk icon Siouxsie Sioux is picking up a pen instead of a microphone and urging Japanese conglomerate Ajinomoto Corporation, the world’s largest manufacturer of the controversial seasoning monosodium glutamate (MSG), to end its shameful and ineffective tests on animals.

“I know that Siouxsie and the Banshees fans around the world—including the thousands who attended our final concert in Japan 20 years ago—will be just as appalled as I was to learn that thousands of dogs, gerbils, guinea pigs, fish, mice, pigs, and rabbits have been tormented and killed in cruel experiments since the 1950s,” Sioux writes in a letter on behalf of PETA U.K. to Ajinomoto CEO Taro Fujie.

Recently, Ajinomoto funded a test in which experimenters repeatedly deprived mice of water, fed them common food substances such as miso and MSG, cut open their faces to expose a nerve, inserted electrodes, killed them, and cut off their tongues—purportedly to establish health claims for marketing the company’s food products and ingredients. Some of Ajinomoto’s other tests have involved dissecting monkeys, bleeding mice to death, and cutting out dogs’ stomachs and intestines. The tests are neither relevant to human health nor required by law.

“Japan is a beautiful country, which I have visited many times, but these shameful experiments are a stain on its reputation,” concludes Sioux. “As a major manufacturer, [Ajinomoto] should be leading the way with compassion, not falling behind. Please, stop being spellbound by bad science and end these cruel tests immediately.”

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 or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.