PETA Supporters to Drop Banner From I-440 Overpass, Blasting Deadly Animal Tests on Ajinomoto’s Anniversary

For Immediate Release:
May 16, 2023

Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382

PETA supporters will unfurl a giant banner on Thursday over the highway at Poole Road, less than a mile from Ajinomoto, the world’s largest manufacturer of monosodium glutamate (MSG), urging the company to end its use of dogs and other animals in cruel, unnecessary experiments, as the MSG giant marks its 114^th anniversary.

When:    Thursday, May 18, 12 noon

Where:    I-440 overpass at Poole Road, Raleigh

“For decades, Ajinomoto has tormented thousands of dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits, and other animals, who feel pain just as we do, in attempts to make dubious human health claims for marketing its foods, ingredients, and seasonings,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “Dozens of other global food giants have ended their animal tests and switched to superior, non-animal research, and PETA is calling on Ajinomoto to do the same.”

Experimenters for Ajinomoto—which also owns packaged frozen-food brands Tai Pei, Ling Ling, and José Olé—have compelled mice to fight each other, cut their nerves, and injected them with toxic drugs; cut open dogs’ stomachs, starved them, and fed them MSG; inserted tubes into day-old piglets’ arteries and starved them; and electroshocked rats, among other pointless procedures.

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, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.