New GenMont Shareholder Will Help PETA Oppose Animal Testing In Taiwan

Tainan City — A PETA supporter has purchased stock in Taiwanese probiotics company GenMont Biotech Inc., which will allow them to attend the company’s upcoming annual meeting of shareholders and push for an end to cruel and deadly animal tests that are not even required by law. They will point out that hundreds of mice and other animals have been used by GenMont in attempts to make dubious health claims for marketing its products and ingredients to consumers. 

The stock purchase follows numerous e-mails and phone calls from PETA U.S. and its partner organization Kindness to Animals—as well as e-mails from more than 72,000 PETA supporters to GenMont leadership—urging an end to such experiments, to which GenMont stated it would not comply. GenMont’s position is in stark contrast to dozens of other global food companies, several of which are based in Taiwan, including Asia’s largest food company, Uni-President, that have ended animal testing following talks with the groups. 

PETA notes that between 2008 and 2018, GenMont conducted or funded at least seven animal experiments that involved mutilating and killing at least 378 animals. These tests have involved repeatedly force-feeding mice probiotics, injecting mice with allergens that caused painful reactions, cutting out rats’ ovaries, breaking animals’ necks to kill them, and other abuse. 

“GenMont knows these tests aren’t required by any law, yet it still torments animals in useless experiments,” says PETA Asia Senior Vice President Jason Baker. “With a direct line to shareholders and board members, PETA will demand that the company stop using marketing as an excuse to kill animals.” 

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETAAsia.com or follow the group on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. 

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