Live pigs shot in head at University of Otago

University of Otago researchers wanted to test blood splatter. Photo / Getty Images

Animal rights activists are up in arms after learning live pigs were shot in the head at the University of Otago as part of scientific research.

Student group Veganism and Animal Right Society member Tayla O'Driscoll said she felt ''ashamed and disappointed'' to be an Otago student when she heard of the experiments.

Earlier this week, United States animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) rang the alarm on the experiments, which were designed to measure back-spatter from gunshot wounds.

''Shooting a living being to watch blood spatter is appalling, indefensible and just bad science,'' Peta United States laboratory investigations department director Justin Goodman said in a statement.

''Peta US is calling on the universities to stop shooting defenceless pigs in the face and exclusively use advanced, reliable non-animal forensic research methods.''

Although the experiments were conducted in 2009, a scientific paper drawing on the research was only published in July this year.

The experiments were a collaboration between Otago University, the University of Auckland, and the Government-funded Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR).

After media reports or Peta's reaction to the experiments, ESR has announced it will not be carrying out further experiments of that nature.

Otago University said in a statement yesterday the experimental research ''went through a robust animal ethics approval process and was conducted humanely''.

''They were all very closely monitored for signs of pain and none was observed ... [back-spatter] is often important evidence in homicide cases and its accurate interpretation can be key to exonerating the innocent or convicting the guilty.''

Ms O'Driscoll said the tests were ''particularly violent, but no different from other types of tests that we do on animals for scientific research''.

''But the first thing that struck me was the test was completely unnecessary and shouldn't have happened to begin with.''

She said artificial models could have been used, and research on pig skulls did not translate well to human skulls in any case.

Otago said it was necessary to use the pigs because the experiments were designed ''to help confirm whether a model head created for studying back-spatter successfully approximated an actual human head''.

''As the data to validate the model head has been obtained through this study, no similar experiments are planned.''