PETA Statement: Taiwan FDA Drops Cruel Animal Tests in Draft Regulation for Blood Pressure Health Claims for Foods

For Immediate Release:
November 18, 2021

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see PETA Vice President Shalin Gala’s statement regarding the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration’s recent decision to drop animal testing from its draft blood pressure health claim regulation for foods, after hearing from PETA:

PETA applauds the proposed change by the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) of a draft regulation to delete animal testing for blood pressure health claims on foods and beverages. If included in the final version of this regulation, this progressive move will prevent countless animals from being used in cruel and stressful experiments, which involve locking rats who were born to develop high blood pressure in laboratory cages, feeding them foods of interest in three dosages for at least eight weeks, and measuring the animals’ blood pressure response using the stress-inducing tail-cuff method.

The TFDA’s proposed revision to its draft regulation on blood pressure health claims for foods comes after PETA’s detailed scientific critique submitted at the agency’s request. This also follows the agency’s other recent historic announcements—after receiving scientific comments from PETA and thousands of our supporters’ pleas to end animal testing—that scores of vulnerable animals would no longer be drowned or electroshocked in order for companies in Taiwan to make anti-fatigue health claims for food and beverages and that the agency would also now prioritize 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, too, PETA is leading a global trend against animal testing—having persuaded dozens of food and beverage companies to end (or commit to never starting) experiments on animals, recently including major companies in Taiwan, such as Uni-President Enterprises Corporation, Swire Coca-Cola Taiwan, Yakult Co., Standard Foods Group, Vitalon Foods Group, and Lian Hwa Foods Corp. We continue to press more than a dozen others in Taiwan to follow suit.

PETA looks forward to a day when all food tests are conducted through superior, human-relevant research methods that leave gentle mice and rats in peace.

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.