JULY 2, 2025 — In a letter sent today, PETA thanks the U.S. Coast Guard Acting Commandant Vice Admiral Peter W. Gautier for clarifying the service does not, and will not, mutilate and kill animals in live trauma training, euphemistically called “live tissue training,” after PETA questioned a policy document issued by the military branch this year that appeared to allow the deadly exercises.
The Coast Guard previously issued a landmark decision in 2017 banning live tissue training during President Trump’s first administration, after PETA released a whistleblower video revealing instructors stabbing and dismembering live goats, among other horrors. PETA worked with Coast Guard officials to adopt superior non-animal training methods.
Responding to PETA’s June 5 letter, Vice Admiral Gautier on June 23 wrote:
“We reaffirm that the USCG does NOT, nor does it intend, to conduct live tissue training. The Coast Guard prides itself in ensuring that our members are trained and capable of handling any emergency situation as they conduct their mission critical services to our Nation and commend your organization’s efforts to identify modern and effective training tools to better train surgeons, medical, and first responders to save lives.”
“The U.S. Coast Guard rightly recognizes that animal-free simulation training is far superior to antiquated drills that subject animals to excruciating violence and bloody deaths,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA applauds the Coast Guard’s renewed compassionate commitment to animal-free trauma training, and we encourage the Pentagon to continue this progress by shutting down all cruel experiments on animals throughout the Department of Defense.”
PETA recently sent letters to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan asking them to prohibit all animal testing across all military branches, including ending the use of animals in Navy-funded decompression sickness and oxygen toxicity tests, Army-funded weapon-wounding tests, and Department of Defense-funded foreign experiments. The Pentagon replied to PETA on June 24 without a commitment to immediately ban these practices. PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org.