Yakult Honsha to stop animal testing

Here’s one big reason to love Yakult even more. Its parent company, Yakult Honsha has pledged to stop animal experiments after the US affiliate of People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sent a letter to the Tokyo-based company urging them to stop experimenting on animals for studies for its products.

According to a press statement from PETA, the group “has pointed out that since all the tests involved common food ingredients with no toxicity concerns, studies could have been safely conducted using humans – and in fact numerous such studies have already been conducted and published.”

Among the experiments Yakult Honsha has conducted on animals included subjecting mice to whole-body radiation, injecting them with chemicals, force-feeding probiotics or bacteria to induce lethal infections, and feeding them apple pomace extract before forcing them to run on a treadmill until exhaustion.

Yakult Honsha was founded in 1935, the same year that Yakult lactobacillus-based beverage was born. — LA, GMA News