Bullet maker scrutinized

The Spokane County prosecutor’s office is reviewing a graphic video forwarded by a national animal rights organization showing 10 hogs being killed during a bullet-testing demonstration.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an advocacy group known as PETA, claims the video, now on the organization’s Web site, shows “cruel treatment of 10 pigs, resulting in the pain, suffering and deaths of the animals, in complete disregard of Washington law, for the sole purpose of commercial gain.”

It is unclear from the video and public records whether the hog killings occurred in Spokane County, as PETA contends, or at a farm in Arkansas as the bullet company, Le Mas Ltd., maintains.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture fined the bullet company $2,750 last year for “physical abuse of hogs while conducting research,” but its settlement agreement doesn’t specify where the violations occurred.

The video, at one point, shows an unidentified Spokane Police Department officer examining a bulletproof vest that had been shot with a Le Mas bullet, but there’s nothing suggesting the officer was present for the hog killings.

Stan Bulmer, the bullet company’s president of marketing who lives in Spokane, said on Friday the video was leaked to PETA by “people involved in the government’s ballistic testing and procurement channels who don’t want to see our new breakthrough armor-piercing technology succeed.”

The company, based in Little Rock, Ark., has used private funds to develop and patent a “blended metal technology” bullet that will penetrate body armor but not pass through the first tissue it strikes, Bulmer said.

Using live hogs, as opposed to anesthetized animals, was essential in order to study the immobilizing effects of the new bullets and follow-up necropsies on the animals, the company executive said.

“This wasn’t just a bunch of guys getting together to shoot hogs,” Bulmer said. “This was scientific testing.”

PETA attorney Lori Kettler of Norfolk, Va., formally asked Spokane County Prosecutor Steve Tucker in August to file felony animal-cruelty charges against the bullet company; its two officers, Bulmer and John Hamilton of Little Rock; and Gibby Media Group of Spokane.

The video “promotes sales of a bullet designed to inflict such serious injury that it is marketed only to the U.S. military and law enforcement agencies for use in urban and land warfare,” Kettler said in her letter.

PETA believes prosecution is “particularly deserving” because those responsible used live, fully conscious pigs instead of body armor or ballistic gelatin, and those shooting the hogs “failed to take any steps to minimize the pain and suffering inflicted on the animals,” Kettler said.

“To be rendered meaningful and effective, Washington’s cruelty-to-animals statute must be applied strictly to all persons who violate the law, include those who do so in order to ‘better’ advertise a product,” the PETA attorney said.

Tucker assigned the matter to Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Brian O’Brien, who said Friday he is reviewing the video and accompanying material supplied by PETA.

The video has not been forwarded to any law enforcement agency for investigation at this point, he said.

“We’ll give it a fair look before deciding what kind of investigation, if any, should be done,” O’Brien said.

Holly Mattern, a spokeswoman for PETA, said that organization now believes the bullet testing and the killing of the pigs occurred in Spokane County.

Lon Gibby, president of the Spokane-based video firm, said his firm didn’t tape the killings but did edit video brought to the company by a client and produced on a master DVD. Gibby said he didn’t know where the filming occurred.

“I was aware we handled this edit, and it seemed like a very legitimate project, with ties to law enforcement and the military,” Gibby said. “I never had any concerns that what they were doing might be breaking the law.”

Bulmer, the bullet company’s president of sales and marketing who lives in Spokane, said he was present during the testing and that it occurred at a private farm in Arkansas. He wouldn’t provide further specifics.

The video scene showing the Spokane Police Department patch came from separate filming in Spokane County of Le Mas bullets being fired into a Kevlar bulletproof vest, Bulmer said.

Before levying its $2,750 fine against Le Mas last year, the Department of Agriculture concluded the bullet company violated the Animal Welfare Act and associated federal regulations by failing to register with the USDA as an animal research facility.

Bulmer said that was a “mere technicality the company didn’t know about. We’ve conducted live-animal tests since then.”

The man who shot the hogs was a “licensed farmer” who test-fired the new Le Mas bullets and existing “jacketed hollow-point” bullets used by most law enforcement agencies. Two medical doctors and a veterinarian were present for follow-up necropsies, he said.

“There’s no law against shooting farm-husbandry animals,” the bullet company executive said. “We gave the meat to poor, hungry migrant families.”