PETA Win! Taiwan FDA Ends Cruel Dental Tests on Animals

Update (March 9, 2023): Victory! Animals will no longer be used in cruel experiments conducted by companies wanting to make dental-health claims for marketing their food or beverage products in Taiwan.

After receiving more than 52,000 e-mails from our supporters about the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration’s draft dental-health claim regulation, the agency finalized this ruling and removed animal testing as an option for companies to pursue. Now, only safe and effective human tests are required and allowed for this purpose.

But we need your help to persuade major food and beverage companies in Taiwan to end horrific experiments on animals conducted in attempts to establish other human-health claims for marketing their products. Collectively, these companies have force-fed, electroshocked, drowned, starved, bled, poisoned, dissected, and/or killed more than 8,000 animals in such tests over the past two decades.

In an encouraging move, the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) has proposed a progressive new draft revision of a regulation that would save animals’ lives. We need your help to encourage the TFDA to formalize these changes and make them permanent in the final regulation.

If adopted, the proposed rule change would no longer permit cruel and deadly tests on animals as an option for companies in Taiwan seeking to make human dental health claims for marketing their food and beverage products.

Act today, though—time is running out. The 60-day window for commenting on this proposed rule change ends on October 17. Please don’t wait to encourage TDFA officials to adopt the new regulation.

What Is the Change?
Specifically, the proposed change affects the TFDA’s “Efficacy Assessment Method of Health Food for Dental Care” by removing experiments on animals as an option for companies to pursue when applying to use this human dental health claim for marketing their food and beverage products to consumers.

Previously, the agency’s regulation instructed experimenters to feed rats sugar water and bacteria that cause dental decay, swab their mouths, feed them the test food products, kill them, and dissect their mouths. There’s no need to kill the animals just to examine their mouths and teeth—the killing is strictly for experimenters’ convenience.

The new rule, if adopted in the final regulation as is, would eliminate this option for grotesque testing on animals. Only safe and effective human tests would be required and allowed for companies that want to use dental health claims for marketing food and beverage products in Taiwan.

Change Is Good
The TFDA’s latest proposed revision follows other recent historic announcements. Following years of sustained PETA pressure, the agency announced a series of historic steps forward:

• The agency no longer requires deadly animal testing by companies in Taiwan wanting to make blood pressure health claims for marketing their food or beverage products.
• Scores of vulnerable animals will no longer be drowned or electroshocked in order for companies in Taiwan to make anti-fatigue health claims about food and beverages.
• TFDA now prioritizes internationally recognized, non-animal tests for assessing food safety.

In addition to 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, PETA is leading a global trend against animal testing—we’ve persuaded dozens of food and beverage companies, including major ones in Taiwan, to end (or commit to never starting) experiments on animals, and we’re urging more such companies there to follow suit.

Not only is animal experimentation cruel, it’s also a colossal failure. Specifically, 90% of basic research, the majority of which involves animal tests, fails to lead to treatments for humans—and more than 95% of new drugs that test safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials.