German State Agency to Investigate Military’s Cruel Trauma Drills on Animals After PETA Plea

For Immediate Release:
April 21, 2021

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

In a progressive move that has the potential to spare animals mutilation and death, a German state agency has agreed to question the necessity of the country’s armed forces’ use of pigs in medical trauma training drills and to assess the value of non-animal simulation models. The decision by the Brandenburg State Office for Occupational Safety, Consumer Protection and Health in Potsdam comes after PETA and its affiliate PETA Germany called for it to reject and prohibit all current and future approvals for the military’s trauma exercises. The ethical justifiability of the exercises on animals will also be questioned, according to the authority.

The German military cuts into and maims live pigs, who are used as stand-ins for troops wounded in combat, and then forces medical personnel to practice surgical procedures on them, even though the animals’ anatomy is vastly different from that of humans. In their letter to the regulator, PETA and PETA Germany pointed to studies demonstrating that lifelike human simulators and other non-animal methods, which are already used instead of animals by more than 70% of all NATO countries, perform as well as or better than animal-based exercises.

“Mutilating sensitive pigs to study human war wounds is as barbaric as it is unscientific,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA is pleased that German officials are open to superior, human-relevant testing methods that protect troops and leave animals in peace, not pieces.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, the human-supremacist belief system that other animals exist for humans to exploit at will. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.