On August 7, 206 carcasses were removed from a single poultry house. However, this mass death did not occur suddenly.The chickens began panting with their mouths open in March, and as the heat intensified from spring into summer, their numbers…
Dangerous heat levels of 37°C and 39°C continue to be recorded across Japan. Laying hens are animals that suffer significant damage from heat. However, unlike humans, they cannot sweat to cool themselves down. When chickens get hot, they move their…
— The Next Step in ESG Management, Informed by Dialogue with Hokuryo In recent years, alongside climate change and human rights, animal welfare has also attracted growing international attention as a corporate sustainability issue. In Europe and the United States,…
Chihiro Okada, Representative of the Animal Rights Center Japan, spoke at the stakeholder meeting of the International Cooperation on Cosmetics Regulation (ICCR) in her capacity as Vice Chairperson of the Japan Ethical Initiative (JEI). The ICCR is an international conference…
On June 10, 2026, the Animal Rights Center submitted a petition to the Tokyo Shibaura Meat Market requesting the installation of permanent drinking water facilities in pig lairages. In this petition, the voices of 32,061 individuals collected through an online…
― Inside the Cage Revealed Inescapable Injury In Japan, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, egg-laying poultry producers, and some researchers have long explained that “feather pecking and cannibalism occur in free-range systems, and cage housing has aspects that…
Animal welfare continues to evolve alongside advances in science. Methods once considered “better” may, through new research, be shown to cause animals severe suffering. Conversely, new technologies and management practices that cause less suffering may also be developed. For this…
As the representative of the Animal Rights Center Japan, the very first time I was shocked by the reality of livestock was when I saw a small photo of live export in a third-grade social studies textbook, used as an…
A quiet transformation is underway within the Japanese mayonnaise industry. Until recently, mayonnaise made with cage-free eggs was a niche product sold only in select health food stores or through mail order. However, this situation has begun to shift in…
Problems in Japan’s livestock policy brought to light in the House of Councillors Committee on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries At the House of Councillors Committee on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries on May 12, 2026, MP Noriko Ishigaki, in light of…
Certified NPO Animal Rights Center has announced the winners of the “Animal Welfare Awards 2026”, which recognize initiatives that have had a major impact on improving the welfare of farmed animals in Japan.This year, the awards recognized signs of structural…
In Japanese slaughterhouses, there is still the problem of pigs and cattle waiting at moorings not being allowed to drink water. In an era when summer temperatures in Hokkaido can exceed 35 degrees Celsius day after day, it seems too…
We have been conducting a survey on the awareness of livestock animal husbandry since 2016, 10 years have passed. The awareness of the situation has previously been low even by international standards. According to a study of attitudes toward animal…
30% of surveyed companies have developed animal welfare policies The Animal Rights Center (ARC) has released its “FARMWISE Impact 2026” study of 107 food companies considered to have a high impact in the livestock sector in the Japanese market. The…
Imports of fur-lined clothing had been on a steady decline for the past six years, but in 2025 they began to increase at a slackening rate. With the increase in consumer awareness in Japan, the volume of animal furs handled…
Trade statistics for 2025 are now available. Let’s take a frightening look at the volume of foie gras imports. 1765 kg This is well below the 9,831 kilos in 2024; in 2025, the number of birds was 2,942 in terms…
The Animal Rights Center has launched a campaign “Inside the Cage｜Where the Eggs are Born” to unobtrusively document and disclose the reality of cage keeping of egg-laying hens. Based on video footage and observations recorded inside a single poultry farm,…
Slaughter without stun treatment, only in Japan, is here to stay. Chickens have been suffering for more than 50 years without a voice, and on December 18, 2025, at the House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, Representative…
A cage-free rate of 1.48% is not very high enough for Japan to make the transition to cage-free as well. This is one of the reasons why Japanese companies are not making cage-free commitments like their foreign counterparts. They have…