Companies are no longer required to test their products on animals to apply for “anti-fatigue health food” certification with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), prompting celebrations among animal rights groups.
The amendment to the FDA’s regulations on April 15 made human research the only requirement, removing the use of animal tests.
The FDA said at the time that it made the change to make its rules on experimental methods and lab practices for evaluating the health benefits of health foods “clearer and more comprehensive.”
It means inhumane practices such as drowning and electroshock tests conducted on animals by companies to back marketing claims that consuming their products improves endurance would no longer be conducted in Taiwan, animal rights groups said.
US-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which said it has been urging the FDA to ban animal tests, said that the amendment was a victory for the animal welfare movement.
Among the tests abandoned will be drowning mice and rats, as well as making them run to exhaustion on an electrified treadmill, PETA said.
In treadmill tests, scientists feed rats large quantities of the test food and put them on treadmills equipped with electrified plates, PETA said.
The animals are forced to run at increasing speeds and to test how long they continue before exhaustion means they prefer the zaps over continuing to run, the group said.
After the trial, the rats are killed and dissected, it said.
Animal experimentation is cruel and a colossal failure, as 90 percent of animal tests fail to lead to treatments for humans, while more than 95 percent of new drugs that were safe and effective for animals fail in human clinical trials, PETA said.
The Standard Foods Group — the largest health food company in Taiwan and a licensee of PepsiCo’s Quaker Oats Company — this month became the country’s first major food and beverage company to ban animal tests not required by law.
The company said in a statement that it would adapt to international scientific and animal welfare trends and “not conduct, sponsor, or entrust/outsource to third parties animal testing unless expressly required by regulations.”
PETA vice president Shalin Gala lauded the company’s move, saying it is a “groundbreaking policy that others in Taiwan should follow by using safe human studies instead of cruel animal tests.”
PETA said that it has written to 19 other major health food companies in Taiwan that have collectively conducted more than 8,000 “inhumane” tests on animals over the past two decades in laboratory experiments not required by law.
It also launched an online petition urging them to ban this “archaic practice.”
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods