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Veterinary Training
For decades, the dark secret of veterinary schools has been that they sometimes kill otherwise healthy animals to train students. In 2025, Physicians Committee staff co-authored a first-of-its-kind scientific paper to bring this issue to light.
Through public records requests, the Physicians Committee obtained records from 26 public veterinary schools across the U.S. and Canada and found that hundreds of courses use animals who are killed before, during, or after the training exercises. That’s nearly every public vet school.
Many vet schools kill animals—including horses, cows, and pigs—in what are often called “terminal” exercises. One school bought live chickens so vet students could, among other things, break the conscious animals’ necks. Also, while more rare, some schools purchase dogs and cats for use in courses.
Whether schools use live or dead animals, where they acquire the animals can raise serious ethical issues. Some vet schools acquire horses and other animals from livestock auctions and university “herds.” Many schools also have animal “donation” programs, but the reasons for animals being donated are not always clear—someone could donate an animal because of financial hardship or simply out of convenience.
Thankfully, some vet schools have halted “terminal” training exercises or never conducted them in the first place. And some schools ensure that when they do use animal cadavers, they come from ethical sources. In response to the Physicians Committee public records requests, the Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine and the Texas Tech University School of Veterinary Medicine said they had no records to provide. And the private Western University College of Veterinary Medicine operates under its “Reverence for Life” philosophy, which prohibits terminal exercises. This is proof that schools can ethically source cadavers, use synthetic simulators, and perform procedures on animals in need of treatment!
Take Action
Please help by urging vet schools to stop killing animals and acquiring cadavers from ethically questionable sources. Tell them: don’t kill one to save the other!
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