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Animal rights activists in the UK have criticised a government terrorism experiment which involved testing explosives on pigs.
Scientists wrapped eighteen pigs in Kevlar blankets and placed them several metres away from bombs to study how long they survived after serious blood loss, British newspaper the Telegraph reported.
Before the pigs were blown up they had tubes placed in their blood vessels and bladders and had their spleens removed.
But Liberal Democrat politician Norman Baker has challenged the use of the live animals in the experiment.
“It is perfectly possible to find out things we don’t know without blowing up pigs to find out.”
New techniques developed from the experiments were particularly useful “if there are mass casualties and evacuation to hospital is delayed”, he added.
Roadside bombs are the biggest threat facing British and international forces in Afghanistan and the homemade devices kill and maim troops on a daily basis. A total of 256 British troops have been killed in the country since 2001.
Britain has 9 500 service personnel in Afghanistan as part of more than 110 000 international troops fighting Taliban-led insurgents under US and Nato command.
Britain provided the second largest contingent of troops to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and ended combat operations in the country in April 2009.
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