Protesters to Brandish Tree Trimmers in Call for Animal-Free Military Trauma Training

During World Week for Animals in Laboratories, PETA Will Rally Support for the Switch to Superior Simulators

For Immediate Release:
April 27, 2017

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

What:     Armed with gardening tools, cardboard goats, and posters proclaiming, “Tree Trimmers Used to Dismember Live Goats,” PETA members will head to the Fort Sam Houston military base on Friday, during World Week for Animals in Laboratories. The protesters will call for better training for military medical personnel and support for the bipartisan Battlefield Excellence through Superior Training (BEST) Practices Act, which would mandate that lifesaving medical skills be taught using effective, ethical, and economic human-patient simulation technology.

When:      Friday, April 28, 12 noon

Where:     The entrance to Fort Sam Houston, at the intersection of N. Walters and Hood streets, San Antonio

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—notes that service members currently cut off live goats’ broken legs with gardening tools and shoot, stab, burn, and cut apart live pigs in training drills.

“Stabbing pigs and hacking apart live goats is no way to train military personnel to treat human patients,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is calling on Fort Sam Houston to replace these archaic drills with the best training possible, and that’s human-patient simulators.”