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COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO -- On Tuesday People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) asked for an investigation into the deadly use of goats in trauma-training exercises on Fort Carson, which apparently violates the Department of Defense's (DoD) animal welfare regulation that requires the use of available non-animal methods.

"We have been keeping an eye on the use of animals in trauma training for several years now and are actively taking this on as a campaign to alert the Department of Defense (DoD) these violations are apparently occurring in regularity," said Shalin Gala lab methods specialist for PETA.

Seventeen military bases and four contract companies were written to from PETA for their apparent violation of the DoD's regulation.

Section 5b of the DoD"s regulation states, "Alternative methods to the use of animals must be considered and used if such alternatives produce scientifically valid or equivalent results to attain the research, training and testing objectives."

In a letter to MG Mark Graham at Fort Carson Gala wrote: "You could use the Combat Trauma Patient Simulation System (CPTS) system, which is already in use at several military facilities. The Navy's April-June 2008 CHIPS magazine cited the following benefits of the CPTS system: "The Combat Trauma Patient Simulation forces trainees to assess, stabilize, treat and evacuate their patients. Medics report back that these simulators provide realistic training because they breathe, blink their eyes, have pulses that can be felt and can even simulate death. CTPS electronically 'moves' the patient and tracks all treatment at each level of patient care, starting at the point of injury. The CPTS system consists of networked patient simulators, along with a triage capability that allows military medics to train both individually and as a team in the case of mass casualties."

Fort Carson said it could not immediately confirm or deny the allegations because the unit in question, 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division is currently deployed to Iraq, but that they are investigating the matter.

Every time a facility uses an animal in a research protocol they have to register with the USDA, explained Gala who provided a USDA document from 2007 that lists Fort Carson as using live goats in trauma training exercises.

Gala claims these training exercises are a regular occurrence. In an email Gala stated "PETA received a whistleblower call from a member of the military at Fort Carson who said there would be a trauma training exercise on live goats performed at a range called Camp Red Devil on May 19, 2008. The whistleblower said he found out about this when one of the medics scheduled to participate confided to the whistleblower that he did not want to participate. The whistleblower said the unit performing the lab was the 2/8 Infantry [which Ft. Carson said is the 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division] and that there were approximately 13 medics in this unit. The whistleblower said the medics would be wounding the goats with large-caliber weapons and burning them (possibly with propane blowtorches-the whistleblower said that's how they do it at Ft. Bragg)."

PETA has also sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to issue an executive order requiring the DoD to switch to non-animal methods for military trauma and chemical training exercises.