VIDEO: PETA Confronts Ajinomoto Execs Over Deadly Animal Tests at Shareholder Meeting

For Immediate Release:
June 22, 2026

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Animal defenders converged outside the annual meeting of Ajinomoto Co., Inc.—the world’s largest manufacturer of monosodium glutamate (MSG)—on Friday, holding a larger-than-life image of a panicked mouse struggling inside an Ajinomoto ramen bowl and urging the company’s executives to ban cruel tests on animals. Video footage and images of the action are available here.

Inside the meeting, PETA, a shareholder, confronted Ajinomoto executives over loopholes in the company’s animal testing policy that allow deadly experiments to continue despite the availability of superior, animal-free research methods. PETA’s full shareholder question is available here.

Ajinomoto has killed thousands of animals since the 1950s in gruesome tests used to make dubious human health claims for marketing its food products and ingredients.

“For decades, Ajinomoto has tormented thousands of mice, dogs, rabbits, and other animals in archaic experiments that are neither relevant to human health nor required by law,” says PETA Vice President of International Laboratory Methods Shalin Gala. “Dozens of other global food giants have ended their tests on animals and switched to state-of-the-art, human-relevant research, and PETA calls on Ajinomoto to do the same.”

According to a journal article published this month, Ajinomoto paid experimenters to feed mice a coffee-derived ingredient, inject them with cancer cells, and repeatedly force them to run on treadmills at increasing speeds. The exhausted mice were electroshocked if they stopped running. Experimenters took blood from their eye sockets and killed them. This experiment violates Ajinomoto’s own policy on tests on animals, and the coffee-derived ingredient has been investigated in human trials for decades.

Ajinomoto experimenters have forced mice to fight each other, cut their nerves, and injected them with toxic drugs. They’ve electroshocked rats, cut open dogs’ stomachs, starved them, and fed them MSG. They’ve also inserted tubes into day-old piglets’ arteries and starved them, among other pointless procedures.

Rats are empathic and family-oriented. They will put themselves in harm’s way to save another. Male mice woo their mates with love songs, and baby rats giggle when they’re tickled. Both easily bond with their human guardians, returning as much affection as they get.

Dozens of other food and beverage companies around the world have stopped contributing to tests on animals after talking with PETA entities.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on or abuse in any other way”—points out that when it comes to the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a mouse is a dog is a boy. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.