Cheers! Beer Maker Kirin Ends Animal Tests After Working With PETA
Grab a bottle of Kirin, and join us for a toast. The company is ending animal tests after working with PETA!
Kirin Holdings Co., Ltd.—the second-largest alcoholic-beverage manufacturer in Japan and the ninth-largest one in the world, which is best known in North America for Kirin Ichiban—has agreed to end all experiments on animals used to make health claims for marketing products and ingredients, sparing hundreds of animals’ lives. In thanks, PETA is sending the company a box of tasty vegan chocolates shaped like beer bottles.
“Kirin did the right thing in ditching cruel and wasteful animal experiments,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “This step forward means that virtually the entire Japanese alcohol market has now ended animal testing after discussions with PETA, and we’re raising a bottle to say, ‘Cheers,’ to that.”
Since 2015, Kirin had funded numerous experiments on animals, resulting in the deaths of at least 365 mice and 34 rats. Experimenters force-fed mice fermented milk and injected a chemical into their brains that induces inflammation, force-fed them probiotics and injected a type of flu virus up their noses, and force-fed them a high-fat diet—supplemented for some with hop extracts—before draining their blood and breaking their necks. They also starved rats, force-fed them hop extracts, and inserted electrodes into their abdomens. At the experiments’ end, the animals were all killed and dissected.
Kirin (whose 2018 revenue is around $16.6 billion and which has a Japanese market share of around 30.3 percent) now joins the rest of Japan’s major alcoholic beverage companies—including Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd. (with a 35.5 percent market share), Suntory Holdings, Ltd. (with 15.3 percent), and Sapporo Holdings Ltd. (with 10.2 percent)—in banning animal tests that are not required by law. Other major alcohol industry players – including the Molson Coors Brewing Company, Bacardi & Company, Inc., Brown-Forman Corporation, Constellation Brands, and Heineken N.V., and E. & J. Gallo Winery – and numerous food and beverage makers have followed suit.
PETA has now persuaded four of the top 10 global beer companies to establish new policies prohibiting such experiments on animals. Help us win more victories for mice by demanding that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) stop funding useless and deadly sepsis experiments on them.
