Each year more than 10 million Australian Merino lambs have chunks of skin sliced away from their rear ends in a painful procedure known as ‘mulesing’. This is done because most lambs are bred with wrinkled skin making them prone to a disease caused by flies (known as ‘flystrike’). Mulesing is one of the most painful procedures inflicted on farmed animals in Australia. Fortunately there’s an easy solution – wool growers can breed non-wrinkled, flystrike resistant sheep.
Learn more about mulesing by watching our quick animated explainer.
Australia is the only country where mulesing takes place. Even more shocking, Victoria and Tasmania are the only states where pain relief for mulesing is mandatory, and even then it still fails to protect lambs from significant pain. It’s hard to believe our Australian laws still allow it to happen.
Footage showing lambs being mulesed is so horrific, it’s rarely caught on camera. Thanks to Collective Fashion Justice, new footage shows what mulesing looks like in 2023.
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Credit: Collective Fashion Justice