PETA members and students delivered a surprise package to University of Michigan (UM) President Mary Sue Coleman’s office on Friday. When demonstrators tried to walk into Coleman’s office, her staff blocked the door, saying she was not in, but that didn’t stop a PETA “cat” and his friends from delivering 100,000 petition signatures against the school’s archaic and deadly use of cats and pigs in its Survival Flight training course.
UM continues to torture cats and pigs, despite the fact that modern human simulators are more effective and are already in use in other courses at UM to teach the same skills. In the Survival Flight course, cats have hard plastic tubes repeatedly forced down their delicate windpipes, and pigs have holes cut into their limbs, throats, and chests and have needles stabbed into their bones and hearts before they are killed. In an opinion piece published in the Detroit News, a trauma surgeon recently explained why the use of simulators is superior to tormenting animals.
Thank you to everyone who signed PETA’s petition against these cruel exercises. If you haven’t yet, please help us keep the pressure on UM by sending an e-mail to Mary Sue Coleman demanding that the cruel training exercises stop.
Written by Michelle Kretzer
