Taiwan FDA Ends Animal Tests for Blood Pressure Health Claims by Food Companies After PETA Push

For Immediate Release:
February 23, 2022

Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382

Today, after requesting and receiving PETA’s detailed scientific critique and getting e-mails from more than 51,000 PETA supporters, the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) finalized its blood pressure health claim regulation and removed animal testing as an option for companies attempting to establish such claims for marketing foods in Taiwan.

In attempts to make blood pressure health claims for foods, Taiwanese experimenters had bred rats to develop hypertension, caged them, force-fed them certain foods, and measured their blood pressure response using the stress-inducing tail-cuff method. According to the TFDA’s final blood pressure health claim regulation, marketing statements indicating that consumption of a company’s food and beverage products may lower consumers’ blood pressure must now be based solely on safe and effective human studies.

“Animals shouldn’t be force-fed and tormented in tests for the sake of a food-marketing claim,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA celebrates the Taiwan FDA’s ethically and scientifically sound decision to drop animal tests for blood pressure food-marketing claims and urges the agency to require animal-free methods for its joint-protection health claim regulation currently under review.”

Previously, after receiving both a letter from PETA detailing the scientific limitations of animal tests and pleas from thousands of its supporters to end animal testing, the TFDA prohibited drowning or electroshocking animals in order to make anti-fatigue health claims for foods and beverages and announced that it will prioritize “non-animal test methods that are internationally recognized” for assessing food safety.

PETA is now pushing for the TFDA to amend a draft regulation to prohibit health-food companies from mutilating rats in attempts to make joint-protection health claims. The group is also pushing Taiwanese food and beverage companies to ban experiments on animals and has already celebrated successes with Uni-President Enterprises Corporation, Swire Coca-Cola Taiwan, Yakult Co. Ltd., Standard Foods Group, Vitalon Foods Group, Lian Hwa Foods Corp, and Grape King Bio.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.