The US Navy has been torturing sheep in special military tests but after backlash from animal rights advocates, it has decided to end the cruel testing on sheep.
On Wednesday (February 02, 2023), the animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) called it Victory on its blog saying that they successfully advocated for ending the “Cruel Navy-Funded Tests on Sheep.”
The US Navy awarded a grant of more than $389,000 in taxpayer money to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to conduct gruesome testing on sheep to study ways of rescuing sailors trapped in sunken submarines. The experiments held sheep captive inside a closed chamber that was pressurized and then rapidly depressurized, inflicting decompression sickness on them.
Military.com reported that the experiments the experiments “left the sheep with conditions such as cardiovascular collapse, spinal cord injury and paralysis.” In one instance, the experiment was stopped to take some of the distressed sheep out and killed (euthanized).
PETA wrote that the US Navy cancelled its program of cruel experiments on sheep at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on July 19, 2022 while it was originally meant to run through June 1, 2024.
When contacted for a statement by Miitary.com, the US Navy sounded like denying that they ended the program due to pressure from animal rights advocates. Their statement said it was stopped because “the contract for the project came to its natural conclusion at the end of the performance period.”
The University of Wisconsin claims that it is committed to “careful and ethical animal studies” but has a history of running cruel and torturous tests on animals including controversial testing on female monkeys tortured psychologically by taking away their babies.
Last year, after Russia launched a military operation against Ukraine, many biological labs funded by Pentagon were revealed to be operating in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was aired on German media DW telling about Pentagon-linked biological labs.
