Freshly mulesed lamb held upside down, showing extensive wound area. The tail has been cut off and all skin sliced from the remaining stump. Skin and folds of body tissue have also been cut away with shears.

Can you imagine the public outcry if someone grabbed a dog and sliced away skin and flesh the size of a dinner plate from around its anus and tail with a pair of shears and without anaesthetic.
Well Australian protection laws, whilst prohibiting such cruelty on companion animals, allow this gory primitive act to be carried out on millions of sheep each year.

Why is Mulesing performed?

Because the Merino sheep is deliberately bred to have loose skin folds. This produces a sheep which is very unsuitable for Australia. The folds become sweaty and damp in the summer and a percentage of sheep suffer flystrike. Many farmers breed for straight-bodied sheep (without the folds) but others take the cheap and cruel option of cutting the folds off.

Is Mulesing necessary?

No, but State Agriculture Departments promote it because it is cheaper and easier to mules once, rather than to provide proper management such as good breeding, inspection and crutching. Mulesing is performed to save labour costs and is an economic decision. In a NSW Department of Agriculture publication entitled Science and the Merino Breeder, the authors Dun and Eastoe confirm this: "Breech strike by the sheep blowfly is a good example of a major disease which can be largely controlled by the breeding for absence of skin folds."

What can YOU do?

• Write to the Minister for Agriculture and vigorously protest at the barbaric practice of MULESING. Say you will buy no more wool until it is phased out ­p; beginning NOW.

• Send a copy of your letter to NSW FARMERS ASSOCIATION.

• Join Animal Liberation and help fight Mulesing and all other cruel farming practices.

  
  

Two vets speak out against mulesing

DR JOHN AUTY is a veterinarian with vast experience in the meat and sheep trade, who has also worked as an Agronomist, as a stud overseer in private practice, as Chief Commissioner for Soil Conservation and in the Department of Primary Industry.

He says of Mulesing: "It is similar to flaying and the pain will be experienced for weeks and months afterwards. Mulesing does not free the sheep from blowfly strike, but proper husbandry practices, including close inspection of sheep, will reduce and virtually eliminate flystrike."

DR ROGER MEISCHKE is a vet surgeon who has practiced in the wool growing areas of NSW and for the Federal Department of Primary Industry. He now runs a small sheep stud. Dr Meischke is critical of mulesing. He says farmers who mules and breed from all sheep enable the susceptibility to flystrike to continue.

He says: "Mulesing is an admission by sheep breeders, that their animals do not possess the breeding required for survival in their area."