The militant People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals group is burning their bacon over a report that military police on a base in Hawaii killed a wild pig to get $100 offered (jokingly) by the unit commander.
While the commander of the 552nd Military Police Company, Capt. Jonathan Kuhn, has taken full responsibility for the incident and has received reprimands, Military Times reports that PETA is unimpressed.
“Soldiers used a Ka-Bar knife attached to a stick to stab the pig, after which they repeatedly hit the pig’s head with an entrenching tool, sliced the pig’s throat with the Ka-Bar knife, and cut apart the pig’s body parts that were sealed in bags and later thrown into the wild,” reads a letter from PETA, citing information from a whistleblower who contacted the group, urging the Army to take a harder look at the event.
The incident occurred on the sprawling 7,600 acre Kahuku Training Area in the Koolau Mountain Range, on Oahu last June. Though feral pigs are allowed to be harvested on the island with the proper license, Kahuku is closed to hunting and Army regulations prohibit the use of military gear for hunting.
The MPs apparently were prompted to the act when the company commander offered $100 for a wild pig killed during a training exercise. However, once the invasive animal was dispatched, the officer explained it wasn’t a legitimate offer and declined to pay the promised bounty.
Besides Kuhn, who was disciplined last October, no other members of the unit were punished.
This isn’t the first time PETA has gotten riled up at the military over some livestock issues.
In 2008, they called for the court martial of Army personnel in Hawaii (deja vu?) following the news that pigs were shot and used in conjunction with providing trauma training to soldiers in the field. Similar outrage was recycled in 2009 when military contractors shot and stabbed pigs in California as a part of medical exercises, and again in 2012 with goats in Virginia.
Moreover, to show its not just an issue in the states, the animal group called out the Canadian military for using pigs in chemical warfare training exercises in Alberta.
Just where do you think Canadian bacon comes from, eh?
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