WASHINGTON - August 20 - PETA has launched a new Web site on which it is showing horrific photos of animals who have been abused and killed in cruel training procedures. The exercises were conducted by Deployment Medicine International, a Gig Harbor, Wash. based military contractor that has refused to allow news reporters to photograph animals who are used in trauma training. Visitors to PETA.org/trauma are asked to urge the Department of Defense (DoD) to replace the use of animals in trauma training exercises with sophisticated, effective non-animal methods.

The photos show pigs suffering from gaping, bloody wounds and a goat with a bloody stump where his leg had been amputated. Every year, monkeys are poisoned with chemicals and thousands of live goats and pigs are shot, stabbed, cut apart, burned, and have their limbs cut off in trauma training exercises, even though DoD regulations state that non-animal methods must be used whenever they are available. PETA has provided the DoD with information on non-animal methods and has urged the more than 17 military bases and four private contract facilities that perform these deadly procedures to investigate why available non-animal methods aren't being used.

The Air Force Expeditionary Medical Skills Institute, the Navy Trauma Training Center, and the majority of civilian trauma training programs do not perform these outdated, cruel exercises. PETA's request that the DoD switch to the use of high-tech human patient simulators is supported by the American Medical Student Association and the medical counsel for the Iraq War Veterans Organization, among others, and 15 members of Congress have signed a letter to the Army supporting the use of non-animal methods for trauma training. 

"The military stabs and shoots animals out of the public eye," says PETA Vice President Kathy Guillermo. "We're confident that people who see this cruelty for themselves will join us in demanding that the military abandon these crude, archaic exercises in favor of modern and humane non-animal methods."

To see photos of trauma training, please visit PETA.org.