Leaked Video: Live Goats' Legs Cut Off With Tree Trimmers
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 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 hacked apart with an ax while still
alive.
Following official complaints from PETA about this disturbing video
footage, which showed Tier 1 Group instructors failing to provide
adequate anesthesia to goats who were stabbed and cut into, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture cited and issued an official warning to Tier 1
Group for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act.
Additionally, the Virginia Beach Zoning Administration sent
a letter of warning to the owner of the property where the training allegedly
took place, notifying him that these exercises are not permitted there and that
legal action may be pursued against him if such unauthorized activities are
conducted on the land in the future.
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, and nearly 80 percent of NATO allies have informed PETA that they do
not use animals for military medical training.
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/
S. 3418), which would phase out the U.S. military's use of
live animals in trauma training in favor of modern non-animal methods, has been
introduced in Congress.
Please help improve military training and spare the thousands of
animals who are tormented each year in these cruel exercises by using the form
below to send polite e-mails to U.S. Department of Defense and Department of
Homeland Security officials urging them to take immediate action to comply with
federal regulations and completely replace the use of animals in military
trauma training with superior non-animal training methods.
