UK Among the Few NATO Nations That Use Animals for Military Training
Trauma training sees live animals shot, stabbed, mutilated and killed in horrific training exercises for military medical personnel. More than three-quarters of NATO allies use simulators or other non-animal models because they recognise that animal training bears no resemblance to real battlefield conditions. The UK, shockingly, is not among these NATO countries.
A recent study by PETA US published in the August 2012 issue of Military Medicine, the journal of US military surgeons, reveals that 22 of 28 NATO nations do not use animal laboratories for military medical training. The six NATO countries using animals in invasive and often deadly procedures are Canada, Denmark, Norway, Poland, the US and the UK.
The continued use of live animals by UK and US armed forces is impossible to justify. Superior non-animal methods are used exclusively by civilian surgeons and accident and emergency specialists in the UK and ensure that professionals deliver a high standard of care to the victims of major accidents and violent crime.
Even though modern simulators that “breathe” and “bleed” have been shown to better prepare doctors and medics to treat injured humans than animal laboratories do, UK military personnel take part in archaic biennial training exercises with live pigs. Worse still, they circumvent the fact that medical training of this kind is not permitted in the UK by conducting the training abroad in Denmark.
