U.S. Army Shoots Live Pigs for Target Practice

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer
Tags: U.S. military, health news, Natural News

(NaturalNews) People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has exposed a U.S. Army practice of shooting live pigs so that soldiers can treat their gunshot wounds.

"Shooting and maiming pigs is as outdated as Civil War rifles," said Kathy Guillermo, director of PETA's Laboratory Investigations Department.

The Army says that it needs to maintain the practice in order to train soldiers to treat battlefield wounds in conditions where access to doctors or medical facilities is limited.

"It's to teach Army personnel how to manage critically injured patients within the first few hours of their injury," said Maj. Derrick Cheng, spokesperson for the 25th Infantry Division of the 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, stationed at Schofield Barracks in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The practice was revealed when a soldier from the 25th Infantry became upset over plans to shoot live pigs with M16 rifles and M4 carbines, and tipped PETA off.

"There's absolutely no reason why they have to shoot live pigs," said PETA spokesperson Holly Beal.

PETA has called on the Army to stop using animals and its medical training, "as the overwhelming majority of North American medical schools have already done." Modern alternatives such as high-tech human simulators are easily available, the group said. But the Army has insisted that there is no substitute for "live-tissue training."

"What we're doing is unique to what the soldiers are going to actually experience," Cheng said.

In addition to objecting to the suffering and death undergone by the pigs themselves, PETA has noted that many of the soldiers being trained might also find the experience distressing, because the associate the pigs in their minds with their own pets.

The group has called on its members to call an e-mail the Army in objection to live-
tissue training.

"We are not going to let it drop," Guillermo said. "We'll continue to press both Schofield and the Department of Defense for a ban on these trauma training exercises."

Sources for this story include: ap.google.com.