What PETA Wants

    I love animals...most anyway. Snakes and such aren’t on my list of beloved animals, but even so, I would never kill one as long as it remains in its habitat and stays out of mine. 
    I also like my steaks, bacon and fried chicken and I understand that while they might be packaged all nice and neat at the grocery store, they didn't come from a magical, happy place.
     That said, a recent article in American Military News was both comical and disturbing. According to the article the animal rights organization People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is urging the U.S. Marine Corps to stop eating animals during survival training and have taken their complaint to U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper. 
     They recently sent him a letter restating their previous concerns about Cobra Gold survival training, which involves troops eating spiders and scorpions and drinking the blood of cobra snakes, among other things. 
     The survival training was part of an exercise in March between Marines and the Royal Thai Marines in which they were taught survival techniques that included catching and preparing animals to eat. They were also taught how to make fires, find and identify edible plants and obtain alternative sources of hydration when water cannot be found.

     This time PETA also pointed to the coronavirus pandemic and health concerns such as troops contracting zoonotic diseases after consuming wild animals. The organization took this action after they saw what was to them a disturbing video of Marines and survival training instructors in Thailand killing chickens with their bare hands, skinning and eating geckos, consuming scorpions and tarantulas and decapitating cobras and drinking their blood. 
     PETA called these actions irresponsible and claimed they put troops at risk of contracting zoonotic diseases that can endanger them and the wider public. PETA also sees this as cruel to animals and could be replaced with more technologically informed survival training, such as “interactive video games with food procurement components, virtual reality methods that survival experts use to train Air Force pilots and instructional books and videos.” PETA’s letter urged that for the sake of troops, public health and animals that the Marine Corps ban the use of live animals and instead use more ethical training methods that don’t involve the use of animals.