PETA officials said they were informed by the University of Tennessee (UT) College of Medicine (UTCOM) at Chattanooga that it will immediately stop using live pigs in its surgical and medical training programs.
PETA said that came "after a rigorous, 17-month PETA campaign against the practice."
Peter F. Buckley, chancellor of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, which oversees UTCOM, said that “the use of live animals in the surgical and emergency medical training programs at the COM’s Chattanooga campus is being suspended effective immediately,” PETA officials stated.
The decision came after more than 97,000 PETA supporters wrote to university leadership urging an end to the school’s pig mutilation medical training drills. PETA also engaged Emmy Award winner and star of Babe James Cromwell to write to school leadership.
Supporters spoke out at UT Board of Trustees meetings in February and last October and wrote complaint letters to UT President Randy Boyd, it was stated.
“PETA thanks the University of Tennessee College of Medicine for doing right by pigs, physicians, and patients in ending its gruesome training drills in which live animals were mutilated,” said PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “Modernizing surgical and trauma training will save human and nonhuman lives.”
Last year, after hearing from PETA, UTCOM’s hospital partner, Erlanger Health System, announced a new policy banning its staff - as well as its emergency medevac provider, Life Force - from participating in live-animal medical training drills, including those at UTCOM.
PETA said UTCOM training sessions "involved inducing collapsed lungs, cutting into an artery to induce bleeding, and cracking open the ribs if resuscitating the pigs failed. The animals who survived the intrusive drills were killed."