............. or to keep you warm and cosy!

The article “ Trading cruelty for beauty” in the Winter 99 edition of Animal Rights.... In Focus magazine caused a great commotion. We received many letters from animal lovers who were shocked at the immense cruelties animals go through so that the people from the “civilised” world can make themselves beautiful. One particular letter We received deserves special attention. A young woman said she always uses products not tested on animals, and never wears fur or leather. She is extra careful not to wear Kashmir wool because she had heard of the cruelties involved to produce it. She does wear sheep wool however, because, she say’s it is not cruel.

Let us see how true this statement is. First let me ask you, what is wool? Hair grown by sheep to protect themselves from the weather. Without human interference, sheep would grow just enough wool to protect themselves from the weather, but hybrid sheep that the wool industry use as “wool machines” are scientifically bred to grow huge amounts of wool, far more than their bodies need or can carry.

Research scientists have bred a Merino sheep which is exaggeratedly wrinkled - the more wrinkle, the more wool! More wrinkles mean the animal perspires more causing skin infections and making it susceptible to “fly-strike”, a horrendous condition caused by the maggots (fly larvae) which feed on the live animals flesh and make their way through the body causing the poor creature great misery. Imagine being eaten alive by thousands of tiny worms! Maggots can cause damage to the precious wool. To counteract this problem farmers now perform an “operation”, without anaesthetic, called “mulesing”, in which sections of flesh around the anus are sliced away leaving bloody wounds. The maggots will be attracted there instead, and can feast away on the animals flesh, without eating away the farmers profits!

In summer, the unnatural overload of wool (often half their body weight) causes sheep to die from heat exhaustion. On the other hand the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation reminds farmers that a closely shorn sheep is more sensitive to cold than a naked man. Every year hundreds of thousands of sheep die of cold soon after shearing. The high price of wool covers the cost of the dead sheep and still leaves a healthy profit. In such commercial ventures, the suffering of the animals is irrelevant.

There are a lot of unskilled farmers who shear the animal in a hurry and leave bloody gashes on the sheep whenever their scissors cut too close. Every shearing operation has one boy standing by, called a “blood stauncher”, whose job is to put tar on the wound to stop the bleeding.

It is not necessary in most major producer countries to use anaesthetics for operations performed on farm-bred animals, so mulesing, tail docking, ear-clipping and castration of sheep can be performed by unskilled farm hands. The method of castration, for example, is still quite barbaric: a rubber ring may be used to cut off the blood supply to the testicles, causing them and the scrotum to wither; or the testicles may even be bitten off by farmers, who refer to them as “oysters of the bush”! More suffering is caused by foot-rot and other disease or mutilation to which these animals are subject to.

A new breed of sheep is now rared like a battery chicken. It is cramped in a tiny cage with very little space to move around. This is the Sharlea sheep. It is injected with a drug called cyclophosphamide. It has been found to increase the wool production and “hair” can be pulled out in handfuls. The side effect of the drug is that it makes the animal go blind; but after all who needs a seeing “wool machine”!

Finally, for all those sheep who manage to survive a few years of wool production, their final faith is upon them. They are crammed in containers without food and are given just enough water to survive a trip to the middle east. Many are dead on arrival. There they are taken to be killed using the Halal method. The unstunned animal is hung upside down and its throat is cut. The animal finally dies after several minutes by choking in its own blood. Halal meat is also found here in Malta.

We do not need wool to keep warm. Many synthetic fabrics are available on the market. A fleece for example is not only stylish, but is much warmer and softer than wool. Make sure that when you buy your clothes, they have no animal products in them.