Military goat tests to be stopped

The Ministry of Defence is considering abandoning deep-diving tests carried out in Gosport which put goats into pressure compartments to produce levels of decompression sickness, after complaints from animal rights activists.

Testing was suspended in March this year and now a committee of six experts is looking into less cruel alternatives, such as computer-modelling to simulate the effects of 'the bends', the sickness caused when divers rise to the surface too quickly.

The tests, carried out by defence research company QinetiQ in Gosport, involve subjecting goats to various pressures in a hyperbaric chamber.

Portsmouth South MP Mike Hancock said: 'It's good news. I think they've been shamed into it really. They've found it hard when other countries have long stopped such experiments for these purposes.'

The news comes after the French navy stopped its own live-test programme. Goats have been used in the tests

because their respiratory system is similar to that of humans and they are thought to react to the decompression in a similar way.

The tests results have been used to help improve escape drills and equipment for the Royal Navy, in case a submarine gets stuck on the ocean floor.

The effects of decompression sickness include loss of balance and breathing difficulties and, in the worst cases, paralysis and death.

The animals that survived initial tests were often used in a series of painful experiments for up to five years before being culled and undergoing post-mortem examination of their spinal cords and brain tissue.

Altogether 69 animals have been killed at the laboratory in Alverstoke, Gosport, since testing started in 2001.

An MoD spokesman said: 'A number of studies reviewing the need for further use of goats in this research programme are currently being undertaken.'