We're delighted to report PETA's latest victory for animals used for experimentation—and this time, our "happy dance" is a Charleston, in honor of the hometown of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). Following a vigorous PETA campaign, MUSC has confirmed that the school has not used any pigs for crude trauma training exercises in more than a year and that it has no future plans to do so.

After learning that participants in cruel, archaic training exercises were cutting holes into the throats and chests of live pigs—even though the university used superior state-of-the-art simulators to teach the same skills in other courses—PETA embarked on a three-year campaign to urge MUSC to modernize its curriculum.

Thanks are due not only to MUSC but also to everyone who supported PETA's efforts, which included protests near campus; involvement from local law students; an online campaign in which tens of thousands of people contacted the school via e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter; and complaints to authorities that prompted citations for violations of federal animal welfare law.

What You Can Do

Pigs in South Carolina can rest a bit easier now, but a few schools still torture and kill animals instead of using modern and superior non-animal training methods. Please urge the University of Michigan to follow MUSC's smart and compassionate example by ending the use of animals for its trauma training courses in favor of the simulators that it already owns.

Friday marked an inspiring victory for pigs, who were routinely being cut apart, surgically mutilated, and killed as part of an elective medical training course at Germany's University of Ulm. Just two hours after PETA Germany asked supporters to contact university officials, the university announced that it would be permanently ending the pig lab!

Medical students and doctors at the university were performing invasive surgeries on live pigs, including cutting out their gallbladders, removing part of their stomachs and livers, and cutting holes in their chests. Using live animals is a crude and archaic method of teaching surgery, and more and more leading institutions have adopted the use of sophisticated human simulators in place of animals. In fact, the use of animals for this purpose appears to violate German law, which requires the use of non-animal teaching methods whenever they are available.

PETA U.S. assisted PETA Germany by drafting a comprehensive brief for University of Ulm officials that described humane, non-animal options for teaching the procedures that students were performing on pigs.

While the University of Ulm is modernizing its curriculum, here at home, the  Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) still mutilates and kills live pigs in trauma training exercises by cutting holes in their throats and chests, despite the availability of superior, non-animal training methods. Tell MUSC President Raymond Greenberg to end the barbaric training exercises on animals immediately.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan

 
Although experimenters would have you believe that they only torment animals when alternatives are not available, PETA always exposes this for the blatant lie that it is. The truth is, facilities such as the University of Michigan, the Medical University of South Carolina, and St. Louis Children's Hospital are still subjecting cats and pigs to invasive, painful, and often deadly procedures in some training courses even though the facilities already teach the same exact skills in other courses using sophisticated and superior human-patient simulators! It's up to us to ensure that these cruel animal laboratories are replaced with modern methods that spare animals and better prepare trainees to treat human patients. As World Week for Animals in Laboratories comes to a close, you can help by urging the University of Michigan to cut animals out of its training courses and switch to cutting-edge technology instead.
 

mike licht, notionscapital.com/cc by 2.0

If the heartbreaking pictures of animals suffering on factory farms and in slaughterhouses bring you down (and if they don't, you need to worry), you'll be pleased to learn that scientists at the Medical University of South Carolina are developing a way to give die-hard carnivores an animal-friendly meat fix. With the help of a grant from PETA, the scientists are working on growing "cultured" meat in their laboratory, relying on techniques similar to those they are using in their research on growing human organs for transplant patients.

The list of benefits of bioengineered in vitro meat goes on and on. It is far less likely to be contaminated with bacteria such as E. coli, salmonella, and campylobacter, which are widespread on factory farms. Scientists can control how much fat is added to the meat, which could help people lower their risk for heart disease, cancer, obesity, and diabetes. The production of cultured meat wouldn't generate the tons of animal waste that factory farms do or contribute to climate change and massive water and air pollution. And, of course, if cultured meat became widely available, millions of animals every year would be spared from being scalded, skinned, or hacked apart or having their throats cut open while they are still conscious and struggling.

Meat produced safely in a clean, controlled environment could someday make dead animal flesh look about as progressive as The Flintstones.  

Written by Michelle Sherrow