PepsiCo’s Taiwan Partner Issues Historic Ban on Animal Testing After PETA Plea

For Immediate Release:
June 3, 2021

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

After talks with PETA, Standard Foods Group—the largest health food company in Taiwan and the licensee of PepsiCo’s Quaker Oats Company—became Taiwan’s first major food and drink firm to ban animal tests not required by law.

Standard Foods Group holds the most health food product licenses in Taiwan. It conducted and/or funded at least 34 animal experiments between 2000 and 2020 that involved at least 1,963 animals, in attempts to make human health claims for marketing its products, such as oatmeal. After hearing from PETA, Standard Foods Group has established a public policy stating, “Standard Foods Group while adapting to international scientific and animal welfare trends will not conduct, sponsor, or entrust/outsource to third-parties to conduct animal testing unless expressly required by regulations.”

PETA has written to 19 other major health food companies in Taiwan that collectively force-fed, electroshocked, drowned, starved, bled, poisoned, dissected, and/or killed more than 8,000 animals over the past two decades in laboratory experiments—none of which were required by law—and launched an online petition urging them to ban this archaic practice.

“Thousands of animals have been bled, sickened, and killed so that companies could promote health claims for foods and beverages,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA thanks Standard Foods for its groundbreaking policy that others in Taiwan should follow by using safe human studies instead of cruel animal tests.”

After pressure from PETA, the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) made the first-ever announcement that companies using horrific drowning and electroshock tests—which some of these had conducted—are no longer allowed to make anti-fatigue claims for marketing foods and beverages. The TFDA also prioritized non-animal test methods for health food safety assessments, after being pressured by PETA.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—also submitted a scientific critique and organized more than 95,000 consumers and medical experts to write to the TFDA urging it to ban animal tests for a separate joint-protection health claim for marketing foods and beverages that’s under review.

For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.