People News
Pink and PETA take on Aussie wool industry
By Stone Martindale Dec 21, 2006, 0:06 GMT
PETA (Ethical Treatment of Animals) activists covered with banners reading \'How many Bruno’s have to die for the Queen’s guardsmen’s headpieces\' and \'Bare Skin, Not Bear Skin\' stage a protest in front of the British embassy in Berne, Switzerland, They are relentless-and no celebrity in their right mind wears fur in pubic anymore!! EPA/YOSHIKO KUSANO Yoshiko Kusano
Pop singer Pink has set her sights on the Australian wool makers calling for a boycott because of perceived sheep cruelty, and The Daily Telegraph reports that Treasurer Peter Costello has slammed her right back over her campaign against the wool industry.
Animal rights activists are calling for consumers worldwide to boycott products made with Australian wool because of their controversial "mulesing" technique
The Daily Telegraph reports that Costello claims Pink "knew nothing about mulesing, let alone Australian farmers." "I don't know if Pink is an expert on the sheep industry,'' Said Costello to reporters.
Pink has cautioned her fans to check the labels of garments, and if it is listed "merino wool" or "made in Australia", the singer asks them not to buy it because of Australia's alleged mistreatment treatment of sheep.
Pink issued her missive via a video released by the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
The telegraph reports that the video in question shows Australian farmers using the "mulesing" technique, which involves cutting flesh from the rear ends of sheep. The technique is to prevent maggot infestation in the animal and the potentially fatal flystrike.
Pink also calls for the banning of sheep exports to other countries, especially exports of sheep to the Middle East. The graphic video shows footage of sheep being beaten, having their throats slit and worse.
PETA has effectively killed the desire for celebrities to publicly wear furs, the recent Christina Ricci fur coat incident is proof of this. Now celebrities are eschewing leather goods, but wool is a new list of PETA don'ts to add to the mix.
"Sadly, like any other industry that uses animals, the wool trade uses methods so sadistic that it makes you consider clearing your closet of any animal products." Said Pink. Reported the Telegraph.
PETA has been relentless in its P.R. war against Aussie sheep farmers, who allegedly agreed to phase out the pratice of mulesing by 2010, but, the Telegraph reports, "has failed to persuade PETA to end the campaign, which has already had a serious impact on the Australian wool industry."
COMMENT
blog comments powered by DisqusLatest Headlines in People
- 1. Adam Levine spotted with new girlfriend
- 2. Charlie Sheen partying with scantily clad girls
- 3. Brooke Hogan belongs in TNA
- 4. Johnny Depp to receive MTV Generation award
- 5. Russell Brand praises 'highly attractive' Kim Kardashian
Older Talkback
page: 1
windswept is correct, Pink and PETA both need to do a little research into the sheep industry in Australia before they do something like openly call for a boycott. The people they are preaching to are most likely Americans not familiar with the Australian climate and sheep market and so are probably as uninformed. There are economic and social consequences to this irresponsible protest and perhaps they should pick up a book before mouthing off.
I also find windswept's point about sweat shops in Asia to be a very valid point, and one I too doubt will be protested by Pink any time soon.
Pink will be in Australia soon and I encourage her to take the time to chat with Australian Farmers. I'm sure they would oblige.
Celebrities need to research these things correctly before lending their name to ridiculous causes, as her song is titled, 'Stupid Girl'.
A painless and more effective alternative to mulesling is having sheep crutched (wool trimmed) & dipped (chemical application). However, this is more labour intensive and therefore costs more money.
Money is the only reason why Farmers want to continue mulesling. They don't care if it's cruel and they'll do anything to convince consumers that it's necessary and it's not cruel. But think of it this way - if you or I carried out mulesling on a dog or a cat, we would be prosecuted for animal cruelty. Why then is it OK for farmers to do this to sheep?
It's bloody not OK. It's time for mulesling and also the extremely cruel practice of live export to be banned.
Good on you, Pink and PETA!
Thankyou Bettina
For the posters above who went on about 'the facts', the facts are now on the table. And seconded from me. The only reason the practice has continued is a monetary reason. Farmers need to improve their practices. If their farms become unviable because they have to treat animals humanely and not stuff the land, then maybe it's a pretty good indication that the land, and the farmers themselves, are in reality carrying out an unsustainable business.
Pink should put her money where her mouth is. Instead of complaining about mulesing why doesn't she donate some money to research that looks at other ways of preventing fly strike. Mulesing is far better than being eaten alive by maggots which is the alternative.
Sigh.
Crutching is the alternative.
It is time farmers either foot the slightly higher costs, or admit to everyone Australia is *unsuitable* for raising sheep. There are other agricultural industries our land might be more suited to. Biodiesel anyone?
(in the cutline) '... no celebrity in their right mind wears fur in pubic anymore'
That's right, if you're famous you've got to shave it.
Crutching is NOT an alternative to this practice. Mulesing is done so the sheep can be crutched effectively when they are older.
Very fine wool marino sheep have folds of skin on their rear ends that the shearers combs cant reach. The practice of mulesing is to remove those folds thus giving the shearers combs a smooth area to work with so that the wool can be kept short and less likely to be flyblown through our long summer months.
These folds, if left are the perfect breeding ground for blowflies to lay their eggs in. To see a sheep being eaten alive by maggots is certainly one of the cruelest things you could possibly witness.
Australia is working very hard to find a solution to this practice. We are fine tuning a injection which will effectively stop the wool growing around the problem area of the sheep. Also work is being done to breed fine wool merinos that dont have these skin folds.
I have seen mulesing down and was horrified by what i saw, but when shown a sheep with flystrike and watching 100000's of maggots eat away at its live flesh, i reveiwed my opinion.
Pink should be putting her voice to trying to help find a solution, its easy to be critical without the true facts
Bruce Taylor is correct... 'Australia is *unsuitable* for raising sheep.'
Bettina goes on... 'Why then is it OK for farmers to do this to sheep?
It's bloody not OK. It's time for mulesing and also the extremely cruel practice of live export to be banned.'
Isn't it time we evolved beyond exploiting animals so horrendously? I worked in the live shipping industry, I had to leave the cruelty and suffering is barbaric, and that's here in Australia, It gets WORSE when landed. It is IMMORAL to continue this trade. Farming in Australia is blundering along, protected and propped up by the Nationals and the Liberal squattocracy. We need rapid and radical innovation. How about using the obscene revenue surpluses to buy marginal farmers out!
Who's Pink?
she sings that annoying song in the NFL football show on Sunday night
Good on pink
whether you agree or disagree about australian farming practices, animals have no voice and by at least drawing attention to these issues celebrities are finally lending their names to something worthwhile whilst many civillians sit and do nothing.
personally IMO live export and mulesing needs to end and a suitable mre humane approach or alternative needs to be investigated, if we insist on killing innocent creatures can we not at least let their short lives end with dignity.
well done Peta and well done Pink x
Drawing attention to the practice is great, and to help fund or find an alternative is even better. But to ask the world to boycott all Australian wool products is only adding to woe Australia already drought ridden farmers plight is just heartless.
And to those who said lets just sell up all the struggling farmers, who will we sell the land too, the japanese, the americans?
Inside the Wool Industry
----------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------
Without human interference, sheep grow just enough wool to protect themselves from temperature extremes. The fleece provides effective insulation against both the cold and heat. Wool was once obtained by plucking it from sheep during their molting seasons. Breeding for continuous fleece growth began after the invention of shears.(1)
Shearing and Mulesing Equal Sheep Abuse
With approximately 100 million sheep, Australia produces 25 percent of the world’s wool.(2) Flocks usually consist of thousands of sheep, making it impossible to give individual attention to their needs; it is considered normal in the Australian wool industry for as many as 6 million sheep to die each season.(3) Because there is so much death and disease in the wool industry, the rational solution is to reduce the number of sheep who are used for their wool in order to maintain them decently. Instead, sheep are bred to bear more lambs in order to offset the deaths.
In Australia, the most commonly raised sheep are merinos, who are specifically bred to have wrinkled skin, which means more wool per animal. This unnatural overload of wool causes animals to die of heat exhaustion during hot months, and the wrinkles also collect urine and moisture. Attracted to the moisture, flies lay eggs in the folds of skin, and the hatched maggots can eat the sheep alive. In order to prevent this condition, called “flystrike,” Australian ranchers perform a barbaric operation—mulesing—by carving huge strips of skin and flesh off the backs of unanesthetized lambs’ legs and around their tails. This is done to cause smooth, scarred skin that won’t harbor fly eggs, yet the bloody wounds often get flystrike before they heal. Under the threat of an international boycott of Australian wool products, wool-industry officials have said that they will find an alternative to mulesing and will phase out the practice by 2010.(4) One farmer—who successfully protects his sheep from flystrike by using a combination of fly traps, chemical sprays, breed selection, and grazing management—attributed the industry’s resistance to giving up mulesing to “a bit of old-boys’-club arrogance in a once-grand industry that is now struggling a bit.”(5)
Sheep are sheared each spring, after lambing, just before some breeds would naturally shed their winter coats. Timing is considered critical: Shearing too late means wool loss. In the rush, many sheep die from exposure after premature shearing.
Shearers are usually paid by volume, not by the hour, which encourages fast work without regard for the sheep’s welfare. Experienced shearers clip more than 350 sheep in one day, and that pace is maintained for up to four weeks.(6,7)
Live Exports
When sheep age and their wool production declines, they are sold for slaughter. This results in the cruel live export of millions of sheep every year to the Middle East and North Africa. In January 2006, in conjunction with Animals Australia, PETA conducted an undercover investigation to expose the handling and slaughter conditions endured by sheep who are exported to these destinations from Australia.
Contrary to claims made by the Australian government and live-export industry that animals are treated humanely, investigators found that sheep and cows were dragged off trucks by their ears and legs and left to die in barren feedlots. They were bound and thrown into the trunks of cars, and they were slaughtered in prolonged and cruel ways that are illegal in the United States, Europe, and Australia. Live exports to Egypt have since been temporarily suspended. Please visit SaveTheSheep.com for more details about this investigation.
Other Kinds of Wool
It may be called wool, mohair, pashmina, shahtoosh, or cashmere. But no matter what it’s called, any kind of wool means suffering for animals.
Contrary to what many consumers think, “shearling” is not sheared wool. A shearling is a yearling sheep who has been shorn once. A shearling garment is made from the skin and coat of a sheep or a lamb who is shorn shortly before slaughter; the skin is tanned with the wool still on it.
Cashmere is made from the coats of cashmere goats, who are kept by the millions in China and Mongolia, which dominate the market for this “luxury” material.(8) Industry experts advise that farmers should expect to kill 50 to 80 percent of young goats because their coats do not meet standards.(9)
Angora rabbits may be strapped to a board for shearing, kicking powerfully in protest as clippers or scissors inevitably bite into their flesh. Angora rabbits have very delicate foot pads, which means that they often develop excruciatingly painful foot ulcers when they are forced to spend their lives standing on the floors of wire cages. Female rabbits produce more wool than males do, so on larger farms, male rabbits who are not destined to be breeders are killed at birth.(10)
Shahtoosh is made from the coat of the endangered chiru, or Tibetan antelope. Because chirus cannot be domesticated, they must be killed before their wool can be obtained. Although it has been illegal to sell or possess shahtoosh products since 1975, thousands of chirus are killed every year for shawls that are sold on the black market for as much as $15,000 apiece. It takes up to five dead antelopes to make one shawl.(11)
The alpaca-wool industry exploded in the 1980s, when South American alpacas and llamas were marketed worldwide to entrepreneurs. The demand for alpaca wool has increased, so much so that herds numbering in the tens of thousands are now raised in the United States and Australia. Most of the world’s alpacas live in Peru, but government officials there believe that Australia could take over the industry within two decades.(12)
What You Can Do
Use alternatives to wool, including cotton, cotton flannel, polyester fleece, synthetic shearling, and other cruelty-free fibers, as people with wool allergies have been doing for years. Tencel—which is breathable, durable, and biodegradable—is one of the newest cruelty-free wool substitutes. Polartec Wind Pro, which is made primarily from recycled plastic soda bottles, is a high-density fleece with four times the wind resistance of wool, and it also wicks away moisture.(13)
Buy clothing from retailers that have pledged not to sell Australian merino wool products until mulesing and live exports have ended, such as American Eagle Outfitters, Abercrombie & Fitch, Timberland, Aéropostale, and Limited Brands.
References
1) Priscilla A. Gibson-Roberts, “Scandinavian Sheep,” Knitters Magazine 2000.
2) Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Year Book Australia, 2006,” 25 Jan. 2006.
3) Australian Wool Innovation Production Forecasting Committee, “Australian Wool Production Forecast Report,” Australian Wool Innovation Limited, Sep. 2003.
4) Linda Sharman, “Wool Fightback,” Countryman (Western Australia), 11 Nov. 2004.
5) Richard Yallop, “Farmers Strike a Blowie for Long-Suffering Sheep,” Australian 20 Dec. 2004.
6) “Shearing Alternatives Under the Spotlight,” Country-Wide Northern 1 Nov. 2004.
7) Veterinary Education and Information Network, “Wool: The Major Sheep-Farm Product,” Sheep Health & Production (Sydney: University of Sydney, 2003).
8) “World Markets,” Cashemere Producers of America, 23 Jun. 2006.
9) “Cashmere Characteristics,” Cashmere Producers of America, 23 Jun. 2006.
10) F. Lebas et al., The Rabbit—Husbandry, Health, and Production (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1997).
11) U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “Shatoosh Dealers Plead Guilty to Smuggling and Illegal Sale of Tibetan Antelope Shawls,” news release, 7 Jul. 2000.
12) “A Shaggy Business,” The Economist 1 Dec. 2005.
13) Sal Ruibal, “Edge of Winter: Beauty, Danger; Layering Clothes Essential for Sudden Temperature Shifts,” USA Today 23 Nov. 2001.
In summary, the practice in question, cutting of sections of skin and flesh without painkillers, is only necessary because the sheep are being bred to have wrinkly skin where 'fly strikes' happen. They are bred like that because, as former posters have stated, it is cheaper to produce thousands of sheep with lots of wool, than to have healthy sheep with less fur. And as for some poster saying that PETA's 'cause' is stupid, I don't see how trying to reduce animal suffering is a stupid cause.
would the pro peta posters please please get their facts straight about austrailan farming practises.australian farmers are some or the worlds best,why would they do antything that uncessarily harms the welfare of their stock if for no other reason than it will cost then money..we are all you tree huggers and friends of fur and feather when the droughts are causing both native and domestic animals to starve to death,,,,to busy hugging trees or sipping lattes??
page: 1
windsweptDec 21st, 2006 - 01:00:23
Pink may be right to draw the attention of the general public to farming practices that are unpleasant but unfortunately necessary in the Australian sheep industry. However, it is clear that she has little understanding of the issue. Although not ideal, 'mulesing' is far better than let sheep die a slow and painful death from fly strike. Rather than mouth-off over something she knows nothing about, Pink would be better to do a little more research to seek the real truth.
It would also pay her to look into other industries, such as her own for illegal and unfair practices. Pink is contracted to Arista Records, which is owned by Sony BMG - a company that licenses factories throughout the world to manufacture its products, usually in Asia. Many of these factories are operated under third world conditions with poor pay, entitlements and no workers rights.
Perhaps we will see Pink protest to her employer about poor work practices and attitudes to its own employees around the world? Perhaps she will invite consumers to boycott her own recordings as a sign of solidarity? I think not.
Report this comment