The Wool Industry

Economic logic

Australia, with its vast pasturelands, controls 80% of the world's wool market. About 150 million sheep are raised there annually, in flocks numbering thousands of individuals. These huge numbers make it all but impossible to care for the sheep's needs individually. Economic considerations dictate that they be treated en masse. Breeders try to increase the number of offspring per birth by using various medications that harm the ewe, and cause complications during pregnancy and birth. Just a few weeks after the lambs are brought to the world, their ears are pierced (to make room for an identification tag) and their tails are clipped. The males are castrated. These procedures are done without the use of anesthesia or analgesia. The sheep's death is also subject to purely economic considerations - in 1990, 10 million Australian sheep were shot to death because of drought and a decrease in wool prices.

Genetic deformation

The most common breed of sheep in Australia is the Marino. This breed was "cultivated" through an artificial culling process designed to produce sheep with wrinkled, wavy skin, full of folds. The folds increase the skin's surface area, and consequently the amount of wool that each sheep carries. This unnatural amount of wool and skin causes the sheep great distress, and many die in the summer from heat strokes and fatigue caused by the heavy burden.

Cutting the flesh

The skin-folds and extraneous wool accumulate urine and wetness. Flies, which are attracted to dampness, lay their eggs between the folds, and when the incubated maggots hatch, they are capable of, literally, eating a sheep alive. In order to prevent this "fly attack", breeders use a horrific "prevention method": they corrupt the skin of the young lambs, making them scarred and unattractive for egg-laying. This is accomplished by cutting and removing large strips of skin from the back of the lamb's legs. The lambs are not anesthetized or given any pain killers. The resulting scarred skin is such that flies tend not to lay their eggs in it. Despite the fact that the "treatment" itself attracts a "fly attack" on the lamb's bleeding wounds, and that some claim it kills just as many sheep as it "saves", the use of this cruel technique continues. It seems this is because the economic damage caused to the breeders as a result of a lamb's death is less than that caused by the death of a grown sheep, in which food, vaccines and work have already been invested.

The myth of cooperation

In children's books we commonly find the image of a smiling sheep, peacefully being shorn with oversized scissors, happy to give Man her wool and shed her too-warm covering. This image is maintained as we grow older, even though it is nothing but a fairy tale.

Dying of cold

Sheep are shorn in the beginning of every spring, after the lambs are born. This is done before the season the sheep would normally shed their winter coats, were they allowed to live naturally. The breeders hasten to shear the sheep as soon as possible, so as not to lose wool that might shed by itself. This haste leads to serious harm for the sheep. After their natural defense from the cold is taken away, the shearers abandon the sheep in the field, without any shelter from the weather. The shearing is done before the rise in temperatures, and the sheep suffer from the cold, which causes the death of about a million sheep annually. We can illustrate their suffering by comparing them to a naked human, exposed to similar cold conditions. The sheep's calamity is even greater than that of humans in the same situation, because they are more sensitive to the cold. A sheep's normal body temperature is higher than a human's by two degrees Celsius, thus they need to produce more heat in order to survive. The chances of a naked man surviving in the cold are, therefore, greater than those of a sheep shorn of her wool.

Shearing the flesh

During the shearing, speed is the name of the game. The shearers' payment is usually determined according to how many sheep they manage to shear, and not how many hours it takes them to do so. This business model encourages more violent and careless shearing. The sheep are grabbed and thrown forcefully on the ground, in order to neutralize them as quickly as possible, and immediately assaulted by a worker with a thundering electric device. When the electric shears accidentally penetrate too deep, they slice into live flesh. An eye-witness recounts:

From wool to meat: the transportation

When the sheep's wool production rate decreases, and they can no longer be profitably used for that purpose, they are sent to the slaughter: the wool industry is an integral part of the meat industry. The sheep are transported by truck and train, without food or water. Many sheep collapse and are trampled under the legs of other crowded, frightened sheep. When they are unloaded, the dead and dying sheep are piled in large heaps. Among the surviving sheep, many suffer from leg injuries caused by falling and other accidents on the slippery surface of the trucks, and by the crowded and bumpy conditions of the journey. The injured sheep drag themselves on the ground, supported by their knees. One of the cruelest things that are done in Australia's integrated wool and meat industry must be the exportation of 7 million live sheep every year, especially to the Middle East. Around 100,000 sheep are transported every year from Australia to Israel in an arduous three-week-long sea journey. The Australian Wool Council refers to this long shipment as "an important component in the Australian wool industry".

The kangaroo victims

Sheep are not the only animals who suffer violence at the hands of the wool industry. Due to pressure from sheep and cattle ranchers, the Australian government licenses the killing of almost 5 million kangaroos annually. These kangaroos live on or near lands that the wool industry is slowly taking over. The ranchers regard the kangaroos as a source of economic damage, because these herbivores might compete with their sheep for the same food sources. Most of the people directly responsible for the kangaroo killing (about 90% of them) are "weekend hunters", who slaughter the animals in the cheapest, most readily available ways: running them over, poisoning their water sources, kicking them to death, and skewering the animals and then skinning them alive. Even when the kangaroos are shot, many times they are left to die a slow and agonizing death from their wounds: this prevents their flesh from rotting, and allows the hunter to come back with his vehicle hours or even days later, and pick up the dead or dying kangaroo.

What can be done?

Unlike leather and fur products, which have clearly been taken by force from their original owners, wool enjoys a friendly image and appears to be the product of mutual cooperation between Man and Sheep. It is important to oppose this false portrayal and boycott all wool products. The wool industry, like any other agricultural industry that exploits animals, is cruel and unnecessary. Like any other agricultural industry, it depends on people's willingness to buy products without inquiring into the ways they were produced or how much animal suffering was involved.

In a time when it is possible to buy inexpensive clothes that are made from a variety of synthetic fibers, nothing could be easier than not buying wool products. It is especially recommended to try synthetic fleece fabrics, which are made of recycled materials and have an excellent capacity for maintaining body heat. It is also important to spread the facts about the wool industry, and to shatter the myth of cooperation between Man and Sheep.

לחצו כאן כדי להרשם לשבועוןOriginally published in "Animal Rights this Week",
Anonymous for Animal Rights' Weekly Online Magazine for Animal Rightsלחצו כאן כדי להרשם לשבועון