Photo Op: Ajinomoto Execs to Face PETA Uproar at Shareholder Meeting Over Cruel Experiments on Animals
What: “Ajinomoto: Ban Cruel Animal Tests!” That’s the message PETA supporters will deliver outside Ajinomoto Co. Inc.’s annual shareholder meeting on Friday, where they’ll reveal a larger-than-life image of a panicked mouse struggling inside an Ajinomoto ramen bowl and urge the company to end its cruel and deadly experiments on dogs, pigs, mice, rats, and other animals. Ajinomoto—the world’s largest manufacturer of monosodium glutamate (MSG)—has killed thousands of animals since the 1950s in gruesome tests in attempts to make dubious health claims for marketing its food products and ingredients.
In an Ajinomoto-funded study published earlier this month, experimenters fed mice an ingredient derived from coffee, injected them with cancer cells, repeatedly forced them to run on a treadmill with increasing speed until the animals were completely exhausted and chose to be electroshocked over continuing to run, took blood from their eye sockets, and killed them. This coffee-derived food ingredient has been investigated in human trials for decades, making this animal test particularly cruel and unnecessary. Yet, this type of animal testing is allowed by Ajinomoto’s current animal testing policy.
Inside the meeting, a PETA representative will confront executives over the company’s plans to continue funding cruel and deadly experiments on animals that aren’t required by law. PETA’s shareholder question is available here.
“For decades, Ajinomoto experimenters have tormented, mutilated, and killed animals in archaic experiments that are neither relevant to human health nor required by law,” says PETA Asia President Jason Baker. “PETA is calling on Ajinomoto to join the 21st century and transition to the superior, human-relevant research methods that many of its competitors are already using.”
Where: Outside Palace Hotel Tokyo, 1-1-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. (See the Google Maps link here.)
When: Friday, June 19, 9 a.m.
Interviews will be available on-site and remotely. Photos of the protest will be available here after 2 p.m. on Friday. 
Credit: PETA Asia
Why: PETA notes that rats are empathic, family-oriented individuals who will put themselves in harm’s way to save someone else. Male mice woo their mates with love songs, and baby rats giggle when they’re tickled. Both easily bond with their human guardians—returning as much affection as is given to them. Ajinomoto experimenters have forced mice to fight each other, cut their nerves, and injected them with toxic drugs; electroshocked rats; cut open dogs’ stomachs, starved them, and fed them MSG; and inserted tubes into day-old piglets’ arteries and starved them, among other cruel experiments.
Major food and beverage companies around the world—including The Coca-Cola Company, Kewpie Corporation, Nissin Foods Holdings Co., Ltd., Sapporo Holdings, and Barilla—have banned experiments on animals that are not required by law after discussions with PETA entities.
PETA Asia—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that when it comes to the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a dog is a boy. For more information, please visit PETAAsia.com or follow PETA Asia on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
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