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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.
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.




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.