PETA Releases Whistleblower Video Showing Coast Guard Contractors Cutting Legs off Live Goat for Combat Medical Training

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES OF ANIMAL MUTILATION

The animal advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has released a disturbing whistleblower video showing Coast Guard contractors cutting the legs off a live goat during combat medical training in Virginia.

PETA reports that the undercover video was shot during a training course for Coast Guard personnel taught by private contractor Tier 1 Group. The shocking video shows instructors breaking and severing the limbs of a live goat with tree trimmers. It also shows them stabbing an animal and removing its organs while the goat moans and kicks, proof that it was not adequately anesthetized and was probably feeling pain.

One instructor appears downright happy as he chops up the goat; Coast Guard personnel are heard joking about writing a song about mutilating the animal.

The whistleblower who shot the undercover video told PETA that the goats were later shot in the face and then hacked to pieces with axes while still alive.

The Coast Guard responded to the PETA video by claiming the use of live animals in combat medical training is necessary and saves lives.

“Effective combat trauma training and treatment results in lowering the fatality rate of US troops deployed in combat situations,” Lt. Cmdr. Jamie C. Frederick told Fox News.

“Animals used in trauma training are supported and monitored by well-trained, experienced veterinary staff to ensure that appropriate anesthesia and analgesia prevent them from experiencing pain or distress,” he added.

But the video would suggest otherwise, and when one goat writhes and makes noises, someone is heard calling for additional anesthesia.

Animal rights advocates and even some military doctors argue that mutilating live animals is cruel and unnecessary.

“Learning how to apply a tourniquet on a severed goat’s leg does not help prepare medical providers to treat an anatomically different human being wounded on the battlefield,” Dr. Michael P. Murphy, an associate professor of surgery at Indiana University School of Medicine and a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserves told Fox News.

This shocking cruelty is nothing new.

“Each year, the US military and its contractors shoot, stab, mutilate and kill more than 10,000 live animals in crude and cruel trauma training exercises that are nothing like real battlefield conditions and that don’t help soldiers save lives,” PETA claims. The group has asked the US Department of Agriculture to investigate “apparent serious violations of the Animal Welfare Act.”

Additionally, Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA) has introduced the BEST Practices Act, a piece of legislation that would end the use of live animals in combat medical training.

“You’re torturing animals when you don’t have to,” Filner told Fox News.

Indeed, PETA asserts that “there are high-tech, humanlike simulators available specifically for military training that can breathe, bleed, cry, talk, and respond to medications. These human-based methods are obviously more humane and effective than cutting apart, blowing up, shooting, and killing thousands of animals every year.”

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