Major 7-Eleven Supplier in Taiwan Bans Animal Tests After Push From PETA

Group Urges Taiwan’s Largest Food and Beverage Conglomerate to Follow Suit

For Immediate Release:
August 6, 2021

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Following more than six months of talks with PETA and Kindness to Animals in Taiwan, Lian Hwa Foods Corp.—a major supplier to 7-Eleven convenience stores in Taiwan that’s known for its snack foods—has adopted a new public policy stating, “Lian Hwa Foods…does not conduct, sponsor, or entrust/outsource to third-parties to conduct animal testing unless expressly required by regulations.” (English translation of the original policy in Mandarin)In prior years, the company conducted or funded tests on at least 178 animals in attempts to make human health claims for marketing its products.

“Animals shouldn’t be locked in laboratories and mutilated and killed so that a food company can market its products,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “Lian Hwa Foods’ compassionate decision to ban animal tests will delight consumers, who don’t want to snack on cruelty.”

PETA has called on 20 major food companies in Taiwan—including its largest food and beverage conglomerate, Uni-President Enterprises Corp., and Nestlé licensee AGV Products Corp.—to end needless animal experiments, which have involved force-feeding, electroshocking, drowning, starving, bleeding, poisoning, dissecting, and/or killing more than 8,000 animals over the past two decades. Lian Hwa Foods now joins Standard Foods Group—the largest health food company in Taiwan and licensee of PepsiCo’s Quaker Oats Company—and the third-largest health food company in Taiwan, Vitalon Foods Group, in banning such tests, none of which are required by law.

PETA also successfully pressured the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) to adopt two groundbreaking reforms: first, removing horrific drowning and electroshock tests on animals from the regulation concerning companies attempting to make anti-fatigue health claims for marketing their products and second, updating its safety testing regulation for health foods to prioritize “non-animal test methods that are internationally recognized.” PETA and more than 96,000 supporters are now urging the TFDA to ban animal tests conducted in attempts to make similar joint-protection health claims for marketing foods.

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