Photo Op: Caged Ajinomoto Shareholder to Protest Cruel Tests on Animals at Annual Meeting

What:           To condemn Ajinomoto Co. Inc.’s use of painful and deadly experiments on , a cadre of caged PETA supporters, including —an Ajinomoto shareholder who has previously attended the company’s meetings—covered with gruesome “surgical wounds” will cause a ruckus outside the entrance to the company’s annual shareholder meeting at Palace Hotel Tokyo on Friday. Ajinomoto, the world’s largest manufacturer of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and the owner of Consommé, Hondashi, and Knorr, has tormented, mutilated, and killed thousands of animals in cruel tests since the 1950s. Ajinomoto refuses to ban this cruel practice even when it’s not required by law and when animal-free test methods are readily available.

“Mutilating and killing dogs and other animals has no place in modern science,” says PETA Senior Vice President Jason Baker. “PETA is calling on Ajinomoto to join the growing industry shift away from cruel experiments on animals and to embrace state-of-the-art, human-relevant research.”

Where:           Outside Palace Hotel Tokyo, 1-1-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo (See the Google Maps link here.)

When:             Friday, June 20, 9 a.m.

Credit: PETA

Why:               Mice and rats are both highly social animals who become attached to each other, love their own families, and 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 that are neither relevant to human health nor required by law.

Ferrero International, Unilever, and more than 400 other food and beverage companies and brands around the world have banned experiments on animals after discussions with PETA entities.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone. For more information, please visit PETAAsia.com or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

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