Gory Videos of Live Dogs Cut Apart in Pakistan Veterinary Training Prompt Urgent PETA Push
For Immediate Release:
June 14, 2022
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Sparking public outrage, viral videos shared by Pakistani actors Yashma Gill and Mishi Khan as well as several local animal protection organizations revealed that local veterinary students recently conducted invasive surgeries on live dogs who were reportedly kidnapped from the streets. So today, PETA sent urgent letters to the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training; the Ministry of Law and Justice; the federal minister for Inter Provincial Coordination, which oversees the Pakistan Veterinary Medical Council; and the three colleges responsible, urging them to embrace humane simulation models and ban training methods on animals that are medically unnecessary and don’t directly benefit the animals involved.
In its letters, PETA describes how the animals are seen with their mouths tied shut and legs tied up, lying in pools of blood and excreta after they were operated on without anesthetics, left cut open in filthy conditions and without postoperative care, and writhing and whimpering in pain. PETA suggests that the schools—Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi; Riphah College of Veterinary Sciences, Lahore campus; and COMSATS University, Lahore campus—adopt realistic simulation models for basic skills training.
“Veterinary education should teach students how to behave as compassionate caregivers, yet these schools are fostering callousness and cruelty,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA is calling on veterinary institutions in Pakistan to embrace modern training methods that leave animals in peace.”
PETA notes that no ethics committees oversee the use of animals in teaching exercises and laboratory testing in Pakistan, even as the rest of the world shifts toward animal-free research. In India, all medical schools have been required to stop using animals in their undergraduate curricula. The European Parliament recently passed a resolution calling on the European Commission to create an action plan to end all experiments on animals. And in the U.S., several major medical associations have expressed support for PETA’s Research Modernization Deal—a commonsense plan to phase out ineffective animal tests.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
