Protesters to Hack Apart ‘Goat’ in Call for Animal-Free Military Training

PETA Will Gather Outside Fort Carson to Rally Support for Troops to Train on Superior, High-Tech Human-Patient Simulators

For Immediate Release:
June 14, 2017

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

What:    Armed with tree trimmers, PETA members dressed in lab coats will hack apart a stuffed “goat” outside the Nelson Boulevard entrance to Fort Carson on Thursday. The protesters will call for an end to the military’s use of live animals in cruel and archaic training drills, in which—as revealed by PETA exposés—service members cut off live goats’ legs with tree trimmers and shoot, stab, burn, and cut apart live pigs.

When:    Thursday, June 15, 12 noon

Where:    Nelson Boulevard and CO-115, Colorado Springs

“Stabbing and hacking apart live animals is no way to train military personnel to treat human patients,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling for these archaic drills to be replaced with the best training possible, and that’s high-tech human-patient simulators that realistically breathe, bleed, and even ‘die.’”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—will also encourage support for the bipartisan Battlefield Excellence through Superior Training (BEST) Practices Act, which would ensure that service members stop cutting apart live animals and instead learn lifesaving medical skills with more effective, ethical, and economical human-patient simulation technology.

Last month, the U.S. Coast Guard announced an end to its use of animals in trauma training drills, and the military’s own Defense Health Agency announced that using animals in trauma training is “outdated and cost-prohibitive” and “not anatomically accurate.”

For more information, please visit PETA.org or click here.