Australian Wool Is Baaad to the Bone

As Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress this morning, PETA members stood outside the Capitol with posters showing lambs who were victims of Australia’s cruel mulesing mutilation.

Mulesing involves forcing lambs onto their backs and restraining them with metal bars. Large chunks of the animals’ skin and flesh are either carved off or clamped with vise-like grips until the skin and flesh die and fall off. Both procedures are very painful, and sheep are rarely given adequate pain relief. Mulesing is a crude attempt to prevent flies from laying eggs in the folds of sheep’s skin, but flystrike can be controlled in more effective and humane ways, as some Australian sheep farmers are already doing.

You can help end this mutilation by urging the Australian prime minister to push for all farmers to adopt humane methods of flystrike prevention.

Written by Michelle Sherrow