PETA Urges Secretary of Defense to End Live-Animal Use After Video Footage Shows Goats Dismembered, Stabbed While Conscious
For
Immediate Release:
April
19, 2012
Contact:
Kristin
Richards 202-483-7382
Washington -- As reported by The Associated Press, PETA has sent an urgent letter—cosigned by current and former military medical personnel and emergency physicians—to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta calling on him to end the U.S. military's use of animals in violent medical training exercises immediately. PETA's urgent appeal was prompted by shocking video footage that the group obtained of a military trauma training course for members of the U.S. Coast Guard conducted recently by contractor Tier 1 Group in Virginia Beach, Va.
As seen in the disturbing video footage leaked by a whistleblower, available here, Tier 1 Group instructors cut off live goats' limbs with tree trimmers, stab them, and pull out their internal organs while some of the animals can be heard moaning and are seen kicking their legs. Veterinarians who viewed the video confirm that these are signs that the goats were not adequately anesthetized and were likely feeling pain. The video also shows a course instructor from Tier 1 Group who cheerfully whistles as he cuts the legs off goats, as well as participants who joke about writing a song about mutilating the animals. According to the whistleblower, goats were later shot in the face with pistols and hacked apart with an ax while still alive.
"Our soldiers deserve the best training available—and that's not stabbing and hacking at moaning, kicking goats with gardening shears," says PETA Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. "It's long past time for the military to make a complete switch to the effective, high-tech trauma training simulators that are widely used around the world."
Each year, the U.S. military and its contractors shoot, stab, mutilate, and kill more than 10,000 live animals in cruel trauma training exercises, even though strikingly lifelike human-patient simulators that breathe and bleed have been shown to prepare doctors and medics better to treat humans than crude animal laboratories. These humane and superior methods have already replaced animals at some military facilities and are required to be used by military regulations. Because of the superiority of these state-of-the-art simulators, 50 members of Congress are cosponsoring legislation (H.R. 1417) to phase out the use of animals in military training. After hearing from PETA, the military recently replaced animal use in other training courses that involved poisoning monkeys and forcing tubes down the throats of ferrets and cats.
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