these configurations will be saved for each time you visit this page using this browser
In July 2009, representatives of the Australian wool industry scrapped an earlier promise, made in November 2004, to phase out the practice of mulesing in Australia by 31 December 2010. Mulesing is being phased out in New Zealand.
Originally, mulesing was carried out on sheep after they were weaned because it was considered "too rough" for lambs. However, lambs appear to cope with the procedure better than older sheep as the actual area of skin fold removed on young lambs is quite small, and they are protected for an extra year as well. For young lambs older than two months, the discomfort period seems to last for approximately two weeks by which time healing is almost, if not entirely, complete. Current codes of practice ban mulesing for sheep over 12 months of age. The cuts are executed to avoid affecting underlying muscle tissue.
The New South Wales Department of Primary Industries states in the Standard Operating Procedures that, "While the operation causes some pain, no pre or post operative pain relief measures are used". Antiseptics, anaesthesia and painkillers are not required by Australian law during or after the procedure but are often applied, as the procedure is known to be painful to the animal. makes the product available for use by both veterinarians and sheep industry employees, such as mulesing contractors and graziers.
After a heavy mules, non-wooled skin around the anus (and vulva in ewes) is pulled tight, the cut heals and results in smooth scar tissue that does not get fouled by fæces or urine. Most sheep have a light mules which does not leave the skin bare, but simply removes the skin wrinkle leaving a reduced area to grow wool and stain.
Crutching has to be repeated at regular intervals as the wool grows continuously. Frequent crutching of Merinos reduces the incidence of flystrike, but not as much as mulesing.
At the time mulesing was invented, crutching was done with blade shears. In Australia, these have been almost universally replaced with machine shears. Hand shears were being used when Mules inadvertently carried out the procedure during crutching. Mulesing would not inadvertently occur using modern machine shears.
Proponents of mulesing are largely from Australia where severe and often fatal flystrike is common. While alternatives are available, they are not yet economically viable (). The industry's size and the number of sheep amplify the effect of cost efficiency.
In October 2004, American fashion retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co. responded to pressure from PETA to boycott Australian merino wool due in part to the use of mulesing in Australia. The National Farmers' Federation responded by stating "Abercrombie and Fitch does not use Australian wool". banned the use of Australian Merino wool in its products in opposition to the mulesing practice, at the time an Australian Wool Innovations spokesman said "the company did not purchase any Australian wool". In June 2009, British department store chain John Lewis joined the wool boycott. The campaign by PETA also seeks to draw attention to Australia's live sheep export trade. PETA's campaign has hurt the Australian wool industry with several American and European clothing retailers agreeing to the boycott.
Australian interior furnishing wholesaler Instyle Contract Textiles endorses the cessation of mulesing. In early 2008, the company signed an exclusive worldwide agreement with The SRS Company to source wool from non-mulesed Merino sheep that have been bred specifically to be naturally resistant to flystrike.
The controversy reignited after a television programme aired in Sweden. This programme alleged that a lobbying consultant, Kevin Craig, acting on behalf of the Australian Wool and Sheep Industry Taskforce offered a Swedish activist a free trip to Australia if the activist agreed not to go on camera nor do an interview. As a consequence, all clothing manufacturers and retailers in Sweden banned the purchase of wool from sheep that have been mulesed. Since then, the Swedish Agriculture Minister, Eskil Erlandsson, has said that "he was satisfied that Australia appeared to be responding to international concerns about mulesing and that bans or boycotts were not necessary". "But in the long run we hope there is going to be a final end to all sorts of mulesing."
The Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) has pledged to phase out mulesing by 2010, but PETA has accused the Australian wool industry of trying to extend this deadline. On 27 July 2009, the Australian wool industry dumped its long-standing pledge to phase out mulesing by the end of 2010, a move that outraged animal welfare groups and led to criticism by some farmers. The AWI maintains that pursuing a deadline approach to eliminating mulesing was not based on "sound health and welfare science" and risked a serious deterioration in the welfare of sheep. Alternative methods of mulesing, such as using clips and intradermals, were "not sufficiently developed to support a wholesale cessation of the procedure in 2010", AWI said.
The resistance of plain-bodied Merino sheep to flystrike arose from field investigations by Australian scientists, Drs H.R. Seddon and H.B. Belschner, in the early 1930s. Non-mulesed Merino ewe bodies were graded as plain (A class), wrinkly (B class) and very wrinkly (C class). The plain-bodied (A class) Merino ewes were much less susceptible to flystrike than wrinkly-bodied Merinos (B and C class).
In these Merino flocks, the sheep are plainer than the plain-bodied (A class) Merino ewes and therefore more resistant to flystrike. The rams and semen from these studs are used in over 3,000 of the 45,000 Merino farms in Australia. Using breeding principles, wrinkle-skinned Merino flocks which require mulesing have been transformed into plain-bodied and mules-free flocks within five years.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
