Kategorie: Animals

Following a PETA campaign and e-mails from more than 75,000 supporters demanding an end to the use of animals in emergency medical training, Erlanger Health System has issued a new statement from its emergency medevac company, LIFE FORCE: “Erlanger’s policies and procedures do not include the use of live animals for any purpose including training.”

The new policy comes after PETA confronted the hospital about its participation in a skills laboratory at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Medicine that included invasive training sessions on live animals. These sessions reportedly involved collapsing pigs’ lungs, cutting into an artery to induce bleeding, and cracking open the animals’ ribs if resuscitating them failed. Pigs who survived the painful procedures were then killed.

“LIFE FORCE medical responders at Erlanger Health System deserve top-notch training with human-relevant simulation models, so the company did the right thing in cutting ties with gruesome pig-mutilation drills,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA is calling on the University of Tennessee to follow Erlanger’s lead and replace crude emergency medical training on animals with more effective human patient simulators.”

Studies have shown that medical skills learned on pigs don’t effectively translate to the treatment of human patients because of significant anatomical and physiological differences between species and that medical professionals who learned lifesaving surgical skills on human simulators are more proficient than those who used animals in their training. Erlanger’s statement to PETA also mentioned that the hospital is now using “high-fidelity human simulation models for critical training.”

For more information on PETA’s newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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After pressure from PETA and more than 75,000 of our supporters, Erlanger Health System announced a new policy banning its staff—including its emergency medevac provider, LIFE FORCE—from participating in medical training that uses animals. Previously, LIFE FORCE personnel were forced to attend training sessions held by the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in which they had to practice invasive procedures on live pigs—including IV insertion, oral intubation, and chest tube insertion—or risk losing their jobs.

The post PETA Persuades Hospital to Ban Staff From Maiming Animals appeared first on PETA.

Please see PETA Vice President Shalin Gala’s statement regarding an experiment conducted at the Yale School of Medicine, the results of which were published today, that claims to have partially revived pig organs in dead animals:

Yale experimenters are channeling Dr. Frankenstein in ridiculously crude tests to create zombie pig organs. The 3-month-old piglet victims suffered induced “cardiac arrest” and “circulatory collapse” as experimenters electrocuted them by applying “a 9 V battery to the [heart] wall,” cut their ventilators off for an hour and then perfused their corpses with artificial blood. Adding the insult of wasted taxpayer funding for these tests to the injury of mutilating and killing animals, one of the experimenters admitted to a reporter that they’re “not saying it’s clinically relevant.” Studies show that a staggering 90% of basic research—most of which involves animals, like these experiments conducted at Yale—fails to lead to treatments for humans. Experimenters would do well to focus instead on superior, human-relevant technology, as detailed in PETA’s Research Modernization Deal.

For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The post Yale University Revives Pig Organs in Dead Animals: PETA Statement appeared first on PETA.

IHOP uses a mind-boggling 255 metric tons of packaging per year—much of it nonbiodegradable plastic—so today PETA fired off a letter to the company’s CEO, John W. Peyton, urging him to replace single-use plastics with options made from natural plant fibers. Plastic litter is responsible for killing wildlife who ingest it or become entangled in it, and IHOP is actively contributing to the 15 to 51 trillion pieces of plastic currently choking ocean life.

“Plastic is found in the stomachs of more than 90% of dead seabirds, and the bodies of numerous other types of animals found washed up on shore are filled with plastic waste,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “We urge IHOP to carry out a switch from using single-use plastics for its straws, takeout containers, and bags to serving up biodegradable, plant-based items.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—banned all plastics from its offices in 2018. The group opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

PETA’s letter to Peyton follows.

August 3, 2022

John W. Peyton, CEO

Dine Brands Global Inc.

Dear Mr. Peyton:

I’m writing on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals U.S.—PETA entities have more than 9 million members and supporters globally—to express our hope that you will end your use of harmful single-use plastics at IHOP to benefit animals and the environment.

IHOP uses 255 metric tons of packaging per year, including 37,459,200 individual plastic containers and 208,107,000 plastic straws. Some of these items are made of polyethylene terephthalate, a single-use, nonbiodegradable plastic that’s polluting the planet. It’s estimated that there are now 15 to 51 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that “every bit of plastic ever made still exists.”

Some 100,000 marine animals and at least a million birds are killed each year after ingesting plastic or becoming entangled in it. Plastic is found in 90% of dead seabirds, and numerous other animals are found dead, washed up on shore, and filled with plastic waste. It can take thousands of years for plastic to break down, and just one bit of plastic can kill numerous animals, because after one animal dies from the plastic, that body will decompose, and the plastic will be released back into the environment and harm another animal.

We urge IHOP to switch from using single-use plastics for its straws, takeout containers, bags, and all other items to using biodegradable, plant-based alternatives made out of natural plant fibers. Thankfully, awareness of the sheer amount of plastic waste in the ocean and its detrimental impact on wildlife is increasing, which helps make alternatives more plentiful and accessible, thereby propelling positive change for animals and the environment. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Ingrid Newkirk

President

The post Not Just Pancakes but Also Plastics! IHOP’s Wildlife-Killing Nondisposables Prompt Plea From PETA appeared first on PETA.

After photos surfaced of University of Michigan (UM) football players petting, feeding, and posing with a bear cub at Oswald’s Bear Ranch—a notorious roadside zoo in the Upper Peninsula that tears baby bears away from their mothers and charges people to have their photo taken with them—PETA sent a letter today to UM Head Football Coach Jim Harbaugh, who appears in photos with Oswald’s owner, alerting him to the facility’s history of bear cub deaths and calling on him to pledge never to bring the Wolverines to another roadside zoo.

PETA notes that even though nearly 80% of the bears Oswald’s has acquired in the last 25 years were bred in captivity and then taken from their mothers to be exploited for photo ops, the roadside zoo regularly misleads the public by marketing itself as a rescue facility. Seventeen cubs 2 years old or younger have died on Oswald’s watch, including two who died last year when they were only a few months old and another who was killed by police in 2019 after escaping from the facility, which was ordered to pay a $2,400 civil penalty to settle a federal complaint that its owners had lied about the circumstances surrounding the cub’s death. According to Michigan law, this penalty means that Oswald’s can’t offer cub petting until at least 2026—but it continues to do so.

“Kind Michigan football fans will be horrified to hear that their team visited Oswald’s Bear Ranch, which tears bear families apart and locks cubs up in a concrete prison,” says PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Welfare Debbie Metzler. “PETA is calling on Coach Harbaugh to keep the Wolverines away from roadside zoos and to join us in calling for the bears at Oswald’s to be transferred to reputable sanctuaries.”

A new video narrated by Alec Baldwin exposes the suffering behind cub-petting “encounters,” targeting Oswald’s and other roadside zoos. Once bears become too big to be handled, Oswald’s moves them to enclosures in which they’ve exhibited behavior that signals mental distress in bears—such as head-tossing and pacing back and forth—as has been captured on video. Oswald’s has also been cited for allowing a cub to injure a guest and for endangering children by permitting them to hand-feed cubs.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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