Ajinomoto—MSG Giant That Tortures Dogs and Others in Lethal Tests—Has a New Shareholder: PETA

Group to Challenge Company’s Torment of Thousands of Animals in Horrific Experiments Done to Make Health Claims for Marketing Foods

For Immediate Release:
October 9, 2020

Contact:
Amanda Tumbleson 202-483-7382

This morning, PETA announced its recent purchase of stock in Japanese conglomerate Ajinomoto Co., Inc.—the world’s largest manufacturer of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and owner of packaged frozen-food brands Tai Pei, Ling Ling, and José Olé—in order to ask a question at its 2021 annual general meeting. The group will urge shareholders to end the company’s cruel and deadly tests, in which thousands of dogs and other animals have been used in order to make dubious health claims for marketing its food products and ingredients.

The stock purchase follows PETA’s ongoing campaign against Ajinomoto and its letter to the company earlier this month in which the group urged it to end its crude tests on animals (as dozens of other global food companies have done after talks with PETA) in light of Ajinomoto’s recent roundtable meetings—which considered how it can “‘coexist even more harmoniously with animals’ in a format that responds better to the times we live in and the expectations of society,” including in its “approach to animal welfare and the status of animal testing.”

PETA points out that since the 1950s, the company’s experimenters have cut open dogs’ stomachs, inserted tubes, starved them, fed them MSG, taken their stomach fluid, and injected them with drugs. Some of its other tests involved inserting tubes into day-old baby pigs’ arteries and starving them, electroshocking rats, and forcing mice to fight each other. None of these animal tests are required by law.

“For decades, Ajinomoto has been tormenting ‘man’s best friend’ and thousands of other intelligent and sensitive animals in horrific and deadly experiments in order to make health claims for marketing food products,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “Now as an owner of stock in the company, PETA will have a direct line to board members and shareholders and will urge them to stop these cruel and wasteful tests, which don’t benefit human health.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.