The BUAV has joined the international protest against an experiment carried out in Austria that involves the burying alive of 29 sedated pigs for research into avalanches. The two-week experiment which began on the 12 January) has been halted temporarily following protests by animal groups and international media coverage. Some animals were buried completely and suffocated, while others were covered up to their necks and froze to death. Ten pigs have already died in these experiments. The apparent aim of the experiments carried out by Department of Anaesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the Medical University of Innsbruck (Austria) is to understand the effects of oxygen deprivation on the human brain and why some people are able to survive under the snow in air pockets with little impact on the brain. The scientists also wanted to study the timescale of death. However, in fact several similar studies have been conducted in recent years using human volunteers to help understand the physiological processes in the human body under such extreme conditions. These studies recognised that the accumulation of exhaled carbon dioxide (CO2) is the principal cause of death during avalanche burial and that the size of air pocket plays a major role in the chance of survival.

The BUAV believes that this research is not only cruel and unethical, it is also unnecessary. Moreover, money spent on this research could have been used for equipping the mountain rescue service with modern life-saving medical devices.