News flash! New Zealand has just banned the live export of animals from the country. This announcement comes only a few months after New Zealand farmers announced that they were ending the archaic practice of mulesing, which is a procedure where large chunks of flesh are cut from sheep’s hind quarters with no painkillers to prevent flies from laying eggs in their wrinkly skin. Kudos to New Zealand for taking the lead on both of these issues and setting the wool industry animal welfare bar a little bit higher.

Now it’s time for the Australian wool industry to pull its head out of the sand and get with the program. If New Zealand can make these two important changes in its entire wool industry in a matter of months, certainly Australia can follow suit. You can help make that happen by clicking here.

If you’re new to the blog or to this issue, there is a great overview of both mulesing and live export here.

As if anyone needs another reason to not buy Australian wool, a damning new report about live export was just released. The report found, among other things, that on one recent voyage from Tasmania to the Middle East, many of the sheep loaded didn’t even meet the extremely low minimum export standards, that many sheep developed the condition “pink eye” during the voyage, and that about 1,600 out of the 75,000 sheep aboard died on the four week voyage.

The worst part is that the sheep who died en route may have been the lucky ones, as in the Muslim nations of North Africa and the Middle East, ritual slaughter is exempt from humane slaughter regulations. Some sheep are slaughtered en masse in lots, while others are taken home, often in the trunks of cars, and slaughtered individually by the purchasers.

If you need a little background info on the whole live export thing, click here. And please, if you haven’t done so already, join actor Joaquin Phoenix in pressuring Oz Ag Minister Peter McGauran to put an end to this horrible abuse.

Well, our press release went something like this:

GRAPHIC PETA AD CONDEMNING LIVE-SHEEP EXPORTS LANDS ON PAGES OF LLOYD'S LIST

Group Uses Leading Shipping Journal to Make the Point That Sheep Are 'Marinated' in Bodily Waste by the Time They Reach the Middle East

Which was all well and good, until, just hours before the print deadline, someone over at Lloyd's List freaked. I guess sometimes the truth just isn't good for business, and the magazine decided that they'd prefer to keep their readers in the dark about� the gruesome fate suffered by millions of sheep exported from Australia to the� Middle East for slaughter. Best just to sweep this one under the rug, right, Lloyd's List?

The ad in question is below, along with a video narrated by Pink about the horrific conditions that these animals have to endure en route to a cruel death in countries that have never even heard of animal welfare standards. If you'd like to help put a stop to this, you can write to the Australian Prime Minister here.