For Immediate Release:
February 22, 2023
Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382
Chattanooga, Tenn. – On Friday, a costumed “crying pig” will accompany PETA speakers to a University of Tennessee Board of Trustees meeting to urge the school’s College of Medicine (UTCOM) to stop collapsing live pigs’ lungs, cutting into their arteries, and breaking open their ribs in archaic and deadly emergency medical training drills.
When: Friday, February 24, 10:15 a.m. ET (9:15 a.m. CT)
Where: 615 McCallie Ave., Chattanooga
“Simulation models are superior, are relevant to humans, and protect pigs from being mutilated and killed,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “The University of Tennessee’s failure to fully transition to modern, animal-free training methods that so many other medical facilities have already adopted is a bloody stain on its reputation.”
Following a push from PETA, UTCOM’s partner hospital, Erlanger Medical Center—including its medevac provider LIFE FORCE—recently adopted a new policy barring its staff from participating in invasive training sessions, described as “cruel and misguided” and a “waste of time” by employees.
PETA obtained an internal e-mail in which UTCOM leadership acknowledged that the public’s discovery “that [UTCOM is] still using animals … will be very damaging to the College of Medicine and [its] credibility.”
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, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
