Each year, more
than 10,000 live animals are shot, stabbed, mutilated, and killed in horrific
military training exercises that are supposed to simulate injuries on the
battlefield. But the training exercises that are taking place in these highly
secret courses bear no resemblance to real battlefield conditions -- and they
don't help soldiers save the lives of their injured comrades.
In disturbing,
never-before-seen undercover video footage leaked to PETA showing a Coast Guard
training course in Virginia Beach, Virginia, instructors with a company called
Tier 1 Group, which was hired by the military, are seen breaking and cutting off
the limbs of live goats with tree trimmers, stabbing the animals, and pulling
out their internal organs. Goats moan and kick their legs during the mutilations
-- signs that they had not received adequate anesthesia.
During this
cruel exercise, one Tier 1 Group instructor is heard cheerfully whistling on the
video as he cuts off goats' legs and a Coast Guard participant callously jokes
about writing songs about mutilating the animals.
Later in the
day, according to the distraught whistleblower, who came to PETA, goats were
shot in the face with pistols and were hacked apart with an ax while still
alive.
Cruel exercises
like these continue regularly across the U.S. even though most civilian
facilities and many military facilities have already replaced animal
laboratories with superior lifelike simulators that breathe, bleed, and even
"die."
The army's own
Rascon School of Combat Medicine at Fort Campbell does not use animals in its
training program and has even publicly stated that "(t)raining on (simulators)
is more realistic to providing care for a person than training on animals." The
Air Force's Center for Sustainment of Trauma and Readiness Skills and the Navy
Trauma Training Center also do not use animals to train
soldiers.
Department of
Defense regulations actually require that alternatives to animals be used when
available, but this policy is not being enforced.
Unlike
mutilating and killing animals, training on simulators allows medics and
soldiers to practice on accurate anatomical models and repeat vital procedures
until all trainees are confident and proficient. Studies show that medical care
providers who learn trauma treatment using simulators are better prepared to
treat injured patients than those who are trained using animals. A leading
surgeon with the U.S. Army even candidly admitted in an internal e-mail obtained
by PETA that "there still is no evidence that (training on animals) saves
lives."
For all these
reasons, the Battlefield Excellence through Superior Training (BEST) Practices
Act (H.R. 1417), which would phase out the U.S. military's use of live animals
in trauma training courses in favor of modern non-animal methods, has been
introduced in Congress. secure.peta.org
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