There has been a long, unsuccessful campaign to ban a cruel practice in Australian sheep farms called mulesing — in which a portion of skin is carved from the sheep’s backside using shears, usually without anaesthetic, to prevent ‘flystrike’, a deadly infestation of maggots.
Some companies have rejected wool that comes from mulesed sheep, demanding other methods of avoiding flystrike, and New Zealand has banned it altogether, yet Australia’s wool board has delayed plans to phase out the practice.
Philip Brooke, welfare development manager for the organization Compassion in World Farming, is outraged by it, saying: ‘It is unacceptable that sheep should be roughly handled, thrown around, punched, kicked or hit with sharp or blunt metal objects.’ Even the British Wool Marketing Board (BWMB), the organization through which, by law, almost all British fleece wool must be sold, is adamant such behavior is unacceptable.
