The UK branch of the animal rights group PETA have invoked the practices purportedly observed during last year's Thailand-based Cobra Gold military drills, where troops from around the world had to kill exotic live creatures and then eat them to better train their survival skills.
Soldiers who drink snake blood and eat live geckos and scorpions in field training sessions stand a high risk of coming down with a coronavirus-type or zoonotic disease and could thus even trigger a new pandemic, campaigners from the animal rights group PETA have warned.
In a letter to UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace that was published on the group's website, it expressed concern over thousands of international troops annually taking part in the Cobra Gold joint military exercises in Thailand, where so-called “survival” drills reportedly envisage killing and eating certain insects and animals.
For instance, at last year's event, American troops were captured on camera skinning and gnawing at lizards and scorpions, as well as drinking blood from a decapitated snake while passing it around to one another, which spawned a storm of reactions from the general public.
PETA pointed out to Wallace that the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention had already mentioned that 75 percent of recently emerging infectious diseases affecting people began as diseases originating in and transmitted by animals.
Since the 1970s, it's estimated that no fewer than three dozen…