About 30 animal rights protesters spanned the sidewalk outside Camp Pendleton Wednesday, calling on the U.S. Marine Corps to cease the wounding and killing of pigs in combat training exercises.

With some carrying signs that said "Support our troops: reject animal tests," the peaceful demonstrators were mostly unified in their argument that using live animals represents outmoded, unsophisticated training, bad for Marine and beast alike.

"The best thing we can do to support our troops is to demand state-of-the-art human simulators," said Jena Hunt, a spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which organized the protest outside the military base, which borders Oceanside.

She said sophisticated simulations, latex mannequins that bleed and move, and rotations in hospital trauma centers are more modern and effective methods of teaching troops to treat battlefield wounds.

While those methods also are used by the military, Marine Corps officials have said that "live tissue" training provides a unique and irreplaceable simulation of the physical and psychological reality of treating combat wounds.

The debate has taken hold locally because of recent revelations that anesthetized pigs are shot and stabbed during training for Camp Pendleton troops on a private Valley Center property.

Hunt said PETA hoped Wednesday's protest would bolster opposition to that training.

The hourlong protest was viewed by hundreds of people who waited in traffic to pass through the base's Harbor Drive gate. Most people in cars appeared to read the protesters' signs. They probably heard cries of "Please help us stop animal cruelty" and "No more deaths in training," but few reacted.

Every few minutes, a horn beeped. Some people in those cars, including uniformed Marines, gave a thumbs up or waved; some made rude gestures.

Scott Adams, a 53-year-old retired firefighter and paramedic from Murrieta, said he was not a member of PETA, but participated in Wednesday's protest because he thought using live pigs in training was "an abomination."

With his experience responding to trauma patients and teaching others to treat trauma patients, Adams said it was clear to him that using pigs as models for wounded humans was a poor analogy.

"If I hadn't taught trauma, I probably wouldn't have formed such a strong opinion," he said. "They could use human cadavers; that would more closely mimic what they're trying to teach."

Adams, who said he served as a military policeman in the Army in the '70s, called the wounding and killing of animals far outside the mainstream of medical or combat training. He rejected the argument that the heavy, live animals can be prepared with unique wounds, such as shrapnel injuries, that add to the realism of an exercise, as some frontline Marine Corps medics have said.

"You could do all that with a latex mannequin; you could have explosives going off, sound enhancement," Adams said. "And it's anatomically correct."

A Defense Department spokesman has said those other methods are not always the best preparation.

"Our policy is to minimize the use of animals whenever possible, and alternative methods such as computer simulations are used extensively," U.S. Navy Cmdr. Darryn James said in a recent statement. "However, these alternatives do not always provide the best results needed for DOD researchers and medical personnel to save the lives and prevent injuries to our troops."

Deployment Medicine International of Gig Harbor, Wash., a private contractor, has a $1 million contract with Camp Pendleton to train more than 1,300 Marines and sailors this year on the Valley Center property.

The company conducts the training on private land because those in charge of the 125,000-acre Camp Pendleton decided when the contract began in 2006 that they wanted to keep it off the base to avoid animal rights groups massing at their gates.

The company has said its training uses heavily anesthetized pigs, which don't suffer, and which are killed before they awaken. Pigs used in a training exercise open to the media last week were clearly unconscious.

But several PETA protesters said they were skeptical the animals don't suffer before or during the training

"They can drug an animal up, but they are sentient creatures that still feel pain and fear by being treated as a disposable commodity," Hunt, the PETA spokeswoman, said.

Lezlie Metcalf, a 47-year-old dog groomer from Oceanside, said she is a Marine Corps supporter who grooms pets for many local troops.

But the animal lover said she was protesting because she has heard no compelling reason why other methods wouldn't provide better, more humane training.

And she doubts working on live pigs can ever prepare Marines for the heart-wrenching moment of discovering one of their own hurt in battle.

"I don't think if they killed a million pigs it's going to stop them from that second of stopping in shock when they're actually out there looking at someone they know," she said.

Call staff writer Sarah Gordon at 760-740-3517.

Related

• REGION: Web site decries animal trauma training