CRS,
At least one major European ammo manufacturer does tend to test new bullets on animals--partly because in much of Europe wild animals belong to the landowner, and the meat can be sold commercially. Thus a lot of hunters want bullets that will put animals down quickly, before they can cross the property boundary where they belong to another landowner. Many hunters also like using lung shots, to ruin less of the profitable meat. Many property owners also cull considerable amounts of game, both for the meat and to reduce damage to young trees, another commercial consideration.
I had an interesting talk to one of the ammo company's representatives in the U.S. about a dozen years ago. He said they'd shot around 500 animals during the development of their latest bullet, designed to put down game from roe to red deer quickly with lung shots. It turned out that in their trials, bullets that fragmented considerably, as I recall losing at least half their weight, proved to do the job best--and that was how the bullet they eventually introduced was designed (and tested) to act.
This can also be done on a lesser scale in some parts of the U.S., especially Texas, and more American bullet makers are doing more pre-testing on actual animals rather than relying purely on laboratory pre-testing as many used to do. But generally such testing isn't done on the scale of that test in Europe, and often "our" bullets are designed to perform somewhat differently, with more emphasis on deeper penetration and weight retention.
