Photos: PETA ‘Rat’ Protests Tokyo Olympics Sponsor Ajinomoto Over Horrific Tests on Animals

Posted on by PETA

Shockingly, Ajinomoto Co., Inc.—the world’s largest manufacturer of the flavor enhancer monosodium glutamate (MSG)—not only still conducts horrific and worthless tests on animals but also is an official partner of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and a regular sponsor of the Tokyo Stadium, also known as the Ajinomoto Stadium.

That’s why PETA’s rat mascot Rei stood outside the stadium today to call for Ajinomoto’s name to be kept off the stadium.

Ajinomoto experimenters play deadly and pointless “games” with animals, like forcing them to run on treadmills at high speeds until they become exhausted, swim for their lives in near-drowning tests, fight each other, and leap away from electric shocks in pseudo-scientific tests that resemble nothing so much as a depraved version of the Olympic Games. In Ajinomoto’s “games,” all the participants are killed and dissected in the end—simply so that the company can make dubious marketing claims about the human health effects of its products.

Ajinomoto experimenters have also cut open dogs’ stomachs, inserted tubes, starved them, fed them MSG, taken their stomach fluid, and injected them with drugs since the 1950s.

What You Can Do to Help

Join the more than 175,000 people who have called on Ajinomoto to join the ranks of the dozens of global food companies that have banned deadly animal experiments, which are neither legally required nor useful for advancing human health, after discussions with PETA’s U.S. affiliate.