Investigation: pigs under the scalpel at the CICE in Clermont-Ferrand
Revelations by One Voice and Camp Beagle Gannat about the origin, transport and use of piglets raised in battery cages by the Clermont-Ferrand International Center for Endoscopic Surgery, adjacent to the hospital. One Voice is taking legal action.
The International Center for Endoscopic Surgery (CICE) in Clermont-Ferrand is world-renowned for its training courses for doctors. What is less well known are the experiments carried out on very young pigs there, when it is possible to do things differently.
Camp Beagle Gannat alerted us to the fate of these animals, and together we investigated further. After a year’s investigation, images from whistle-blowers and our own investigators expose the “production chain”, the brutal and substandard transport, and the total lack of consideration shown to the little pigs by the trainers and staff at CICE. All these atrocities for a training program that should employ the latest techniques, as laid down in animal experimentation legislation.
We are filing a complaint against Guy Farm, calling for it to be closed down, and initiating proceedings against the CICE to replace animal experimentation with other methods.
For more than fifteen years, the CICE has been sourcing its “guinea pigs” from Guy Farm, located some thirty kilometers away, a squalid battery farm where mistreatment and irregularities are the norm.
A very “natural” farm
Guy Farm portrays a bucolic image: rental space for camping close to nature, photos of young cows outdoors, GMO-free family breeding…
Behind the walls, however, sows are parked in cages where they cannot move. Impossible for them to take the slightest step, if only to avoid crushing their young.
Factory farming is legal. What is less so is the astronomical neonatal mortality rate, the practice of veterinary medicine by the farmer himself, and the acts of violence perpetrated on both adult and newborn animals.
When sows worn out by repeated farrowings are injured, they are not treated properly. For example, after one sow has prolapsed, the farmer grabs her organs with his hands, shoves them inside her body and sews up her genitals. These acts are totally illegal and reserved for veterinarians. The added bonus of this “natural farm” is undoubtedly the “homemade” aspect.
In the days following the births, the corpses pile up. There are piglets born already dead, barely formed. Those crushed under their mother, trapped between metal bars and unable to avoid them. Those deemed too puny who end up with their skulls smashed against a fence, a wall or the ground, convulsing for a long time before dying.
Battery farming is a lucrative industry, and the farmer won’t be the one denying it.
Those who survive are quickly separated from their mother, crammed together in the dark to be fattened up and sent to the slaughterhouse… or to the CICE.
A means of transport as disrespectful of animals as it is of regulations
When it’s time for transport to the center, the little pigs are grabbed by their hind legs or ears and thrown into skips inside the CICE employee’s truck. Once in the parking lot, those who try to escape are quickly caught…
At the CICE, mutilation and death await them… before the garbage can
Once inside the building, they are anesthetized to serve as living tools for students and doctors, and undergo hysterectomies, nephrectomies, sutures… They won’t wake up. At the end of the day, piglets just a few weeks old end up the same way they arrived: in a skip.
Alternative methods do exist
Today, experimentation on animals for teaching purposes is no longer necessary. Other techniques exist: pelvi-trainers, cell cultures, tissue cultures, organoids on a chip, stem cell cultures, audio-visual aids, apprenticeships and observation with teaching doctors throughout the curriculum… It is no longer acceptable to breed and kill animals for “training”.
Doctor Jérôme Soubielle, who has already spoken publicly on the subject of medical training, confirms:
“There are other supports [that exist] for the certification of this training: the pelvi-trainer and the suture device. […] It’s completely appalling to see this nowadays. I’m not talking about a few years ago, but these days there’s no point. You can train theoretically on audio-video aids, you can train with people who know how to do it on real patients, you can go to the operating theatre, you can go to anatomy laboratories to study anatomy on cadavers. Operating on a pig doesn’t make you a surgeon… Doing a nerve block on a pig doesn’t make you an anesthetist. It’s really something that’s aberrant.”
Animal experimentation regulations are clear: if alternative methods exist, they must be used instead of animal models.
“Performing surgery […] on a pig doesn’t guarantee the validity of the training, and it’s useless.”
Dr Jérôme Soubielle, anesthesiologist.
In the face of this institutionalized mistreatment, we have filed a complaint against the breeder and are taking legal action against the CICE.
Join our fight against animal experimentation. Write to the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESR) to ask it to fund alternative methods, as our European neighbors are doing. Sign our petitions for an end to the use of animals by the CICE and the closure of Guy Farm.
To find out more about pigs and who they are, see our sentience fact sheet.
And for an overview of experiments on pigs recently validated by the MESR, read our article.