Researchers in China have been using live pigs as crash dummies, killing seven in the process and it's disgusting.

15 young pigs were strapped in ready for high-speed simulations, which projected the sled they were sitting in towards a wall at speeds of up to 30mph. Horrifying.

It killed nearly half of the animals, with the rest suffering a range of injuries from fractures to bleeding and internal bruising, in the study that was published in 2019.

The pigs are strapped into a sled and projected into a wall at up to 30mph. (Credit: Qiaolin Wang, Hongyi Xiang, Sishu Guan et al/International Journal of Crashworthiness)

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How can anyone think this is OK?

And to top off this no doubt terrifying experience for the poor animals, they also weren't allowed food for 24 hours beforehand and were denied water for six hours.

Scientists explained in the International Journal of Crashworthiness that the pigs supposedly mimicked the bodies of six-year-old children. But why they can't use purpose-built crash dummies is beyond us, that is what they are for. Plus, reportedly, the highly technological dummies are far more accurate than an animal could ever be.

Unfortunately though, crash dummies are expensive, which is no doubt why the laboratory has chosen pigs, to keep costs down.

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Seven of 15 pigs died in the test. (Credit: Qiaolin Wang, Hongyi Xiang, Sishu Guan et al/International Journal of Crashworthiness)

The scientists tried to justify the use of pigs further by insisting they had followed U.S. guidelines for the use of laboratory animals, according to the Mail Online.



The US used to use pigs and other animals in their crash tests, but this barbaric practice was ended years ago in 1993, first by General Motors, with other manufacturers then following suit afterwards, thanks to pressure from PETA.

PETA said of the old practice in the US online: "It is horrifying to look back now and imagine that animals were deliberately slammed into walls at high speeds in car-crash tests, yet without PETA's campaign, the public may have remained in the dark for years as these twisted experiments continued."

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Speaking to German newspaper Bild, PETA spokesperson Anne Meinert said: "Letting intelligent and sensitive animals like pigs crash into walls in high-speed tests in China is simply cruel"