What's less fun than a singles bar?

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Moms everywhere warn their children that if they lie, their noses will grow*, à la Pinocchio:

Yep, those are vegan lederhosen.

PETA Australia took that lesson to the next level when it sent one of its members to the headquarters of Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) to call out the trade group for reneging on its promise to stop mulesing (slicing flesh off lambs' backsides) by 2010.

Posted by Karin Bennett

*My mom also told me that my pants would catch on fire if I lied, but for obvious reasons, PETA Australia opted to go with the puppet/boy.

flickr / CC

Next! The British fashion giant Next, that is. The mega-retailer has announced that because the nefarious Australian wool industry has reneged on its promise to ban the mulesing mutilation (which involves hacking hunks of flesh off lambs' backsides) by 2010, Next will now only "source wool from outside Australia or from Australian sources which guarantee that mulesing with shears or clips has ceased."

"Next believes that the continuation of mulesing beyond the 2010 deadline previously self-imposed by the Australian sheep industry is unacceptable," the company announced in a statement. Next joins other leading retailers and designers—including Abercrombie & Fitch, Timberland, H&M, American Eagle, Liz Claiborne, Hugo Boss, Perry Ellis International, Coldwater Creek, and many more—that have pledged not to use wool from mulesed lambs.

You can help stop this unnecessary mutilation by encouraging Talbots (one retailer that has failed to take action) to follow in Next's footsteps and stop purchasing Australian wool.

Posted by Alisa Mullins

And that would be Australian Wool Innovation (AWI), which is (surprise, surprise) reneging on its promise to end mulesing by 2010.

AWI will have had six years to stop a horrific practice that no other country engages in. New Zealand stopped the mulesing mutilation almost 10 years ago. If AWI does not meet the 2010 deadline, retailers around the world will take action by sourcing wool elsewhere.

AWI has only itself to blame for losing the world market by trying to delay the inevitable. Of course we were spot-on: AWI has chosen not to live up to its word and is still stuck in the 1930s. Australian wool is no longer the standard—it is now a symbol of the way greedy people have behaved by treating thinking, feeling animals as if they were inanimate commodities.

Despite the fact that leading retailers across Europe and North America are refusing to purchase wool from mulesed lambs, the Australian wool industry's most recent ludicrous scheme is to adopt an equally cruel and painful procedure called "clip mulesing," in which clips are attached to the folded skin on lambs' backsides, causing the skin to rot and fall off. Clips are not an alternative to the mulesing mutilation; they are simply a less bloody form of it. We are pleased, however, to see that the wool industry has finally responded to the complaints of dozens of retailers around the world who want to buy only wool from sheep who were not mulesed (not even with clips) and who have asked that wool from clip-mulesed sheep be identified on a mulesing declaration form.

As the Australian Weekly Times wrote, "For an organisation that purports to be a research and marketing body, the decision by Australian Wool Innovation to abandon the mulesing deadline is reckless, unwanted and unhelpful." This shows that your voices—and those of retailers who are demanding that Australia join the 21st century and stop mutilating lambs—are being heard in Australia.

Please help PETA continue to pressure the Australian government to do the right thing by taking a few short moments to write to Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, to demand that mulesing be outlawed now. And, if you still wear animals even when so many wonderful alternatives exist, ask yourself why.

Posted by Tracy Reiman

theage / CC

The pressure is on for the Australian wool industry! Jiangsu Sunshine Group, a $1.8 billion Chinese textile company, is the world's largest buyer of Australian wool—and it's calling on the Aussie wool industry put an end to mulesing.

The mulesing mutilation is the practice of slicing chunks of flesh from around sheep's tails—without any pain relief—to prevent "flystrike" (i.e., to prevent sheep from being eaten alive by maggots in the folds of flesh on their rump). Flystrike is awful, of course, but there are plenty of humane alternatives to mutilation for flystrike prevention that are in use by many wool farmers. In fact, New Zealand has done away with mulesing altogether!

Sunshine's action will hopefully force folks like Australian Wool Innovation Chair Wal Merriman to abandon this cruel practice once and for all. In a recent article, Merriman thumbed his nose at retailers and consumers by admitting that he will continue to mules his sheep, despite the fact that a growing list of retailers, including H&M, Perry Ellis, Adidas, and many others, want only nonmulesed wool.

Sunshine said in its letter to the Federation of Australian Wool Organisations: "In the last three years, increasing requests have been made from our major international customers to provide product as made from non-mulesed Australian wool due to the strong pressure of the animal liberation movement."

In other words, keep those cards and letters coming!

Posted by Jeff Mackey

Australian wool farmers are very fond of the myth that the mulesing mutilation (cutting the rump flesh off completely conscious lambs) is the most effective way to prevent flystrike, but we know it's only done because it's cheaper than more humane methods of controlling the affliction. These photos, recently taken on a paddock in Victoria, show several sheep suffering from absolute misery, severe neglect and flystrike, despite the fact that some had been mulesed! Yeah. Those farmers sure do care.

Many sheep found on this paddock had such severe cases of flystrike or were so starved or otherwise neglected that they required emergency treatment provided by caring civilians. Some were suffering so badly that they had to be euthanized immediately. Fortunately, an Australian animal rights activist has called for an intervention by the local authorities and has submitted this formal complaint (So far there's been no response yet.)

Australian farmers get away with cutting lambs open and leaving them to be eaten alive by maggots under the pretext of keeping them healthy. Does that sound wrong to anyone else? Please help stop this cruelty by boycotting Australian wool and informing the farmers that mulesing is wrong.

Posted by Lianne Turner

I'm pretty sure my mother has set up Google News alerts for my name. So when I saw a News of the Weird–esque article in Australia's Weekly Times about an Aussie senator, Bill Heffernan, taking jabs at me to the media by talking about my—ahem—circumcision, I knew it was just a matter of time before she'd see it too. Proactively, I e-mailed her the article with the subject line, "Should I be honored by this?"

Now, I'm sure you're all wondering what an elected official was doing talking about my naughty bits to the press. Well, there's a perfectly, um, reasonable explanation: I oversee PETA's campaign against mulesing—a cruel mutilation in which Australian farmers hack chunks of lambs' flesh from their backsides without as much as an aspirin for pain relief. It's the cheapest way to prevent a fly infestation that is dangerous—but that could be prevented if farmers would just look after the sheep instead of abandoning them in open fields and forgetting about them until slaughter or shearing. So, in his frustration over the fact that we've been getting major retailers such as Abercrombie & Fitch and Perry Ellis to stop using Australian wool, Senator Heffernan lashed out. Check out this juicy excerpt from the article:

Last week [Senator Heffernan] turned his verbal blowtorch on animal activist Matt Prescott from the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals [sic], after Prescott flagged the wool industry would die if it failed to ban mulesing.

"I'll bet he's been circumcised," Senator Heffernan said, the inference being that it is no different to a lamb being mulesed.

"I hope he has. I'll be putting that to him. That bloke needs to come over here, have a look at our sheep and learn some home truths."

My reply? "Dear Senator Heffernan, You were right: I have indeed been circumcised. Fortunately, my parents didn't perform the cut in a field with a pair of garden shears, and they didn't remove my flesh because of a financial interest. No such luck for lambs." (You can read the full reply here.)

My mother's reply? "I'm not sure this is a compliment, but I guess you can't beat a senator talking publicly about your circumcision."

Posted by Matt Prescott

sheep101 / CC

Yesterday, PETA sent a letter to the Australian wool industry on behalf of numerous major clothing retailers—including Gap, Liz Claiborne, Nordstrom, Haggar Clothing, Coppley Apparel, Austin Reed, Carter's, C&A Europe, Bestseller A/S, and Matalan Retail Limited—encouraging the addition of a "clip mulesing" tick box to the industry's new nonmulesed-certification form.

In addition, Nike, Lindex, Marks & Spencer, and H&M sent their own letters urging the industry to add clip mulesing to the certification.

So, what is this tick box, and why is it important? Well, the wool industry has made a certification form to allow retailers to purchase wool from lambs who haven't undergone the mulesing mutilation. (Yay!) But under the current certification, if a retailer also doesn't want wool from lambs who have undergone clip mulesing—where their skin is painfully killed using tight clamps—they can't get it. (Boo!)

So PETA flexed a little muscle and got 15 major clothing retailers, whose sales total more than AUD $100 billion (yes, that's "billion" with a "B"), to send a strong message to the wool industry that they oppose clip mulesing and want to avoid mulesing of any kind in their supply chains.

Of these companies, one—Nordstrom—stands out. Nordstrom was ready to pilot the certification program for all its own-label 2009 men's merino wool sweaters. After figuring out that the industry couldn't guarantee that no clip mulesing was used for the sweaters, Nordstrom backed out of the program. But then it went even one step further and decided to source all that wool from outside Australia instead!

Kudos to Nordstrom and these 14 other retailers for helping send the strong message that clip mulesing is not acceptable and that real alternatives to mulesing must be put in place.

The world is watching, Australia ….

Posted by Matt Prescott, PETA Corporate Affairs

As a clarion call to people of faith, a priest recently bestowed a blessing upon sheep who were bound for live export aboard a cargo ship in Fremantle, Western Australia. In a public display of solidarity, the priest blessed the sheep with holy water before they were loaded onto the cargo ship Mayora.

Father Mostowik is the director of missionaries for the Sacred Heart Justice and Peace Centre and is certainly no stranger to social justice. Thankfully, his ethics include the understanding that compassion must reach to all beings, not just the talking two-legged ones. His powerful message, while unspoken, was made loud and clear. It is a signal to us believin' folk of various faiths that our duty of compassion should extend to all of God's creatures.

While it's wonderful that Father Mostowik is using what he believes is right to take action in his own way, we here at PETA know that these animals need a heck of a lot more than a kind blessing. These animals need action, kindness, and support.

The slave ships that drag these animals across the globe are an ugly truth that usually goes unseen. Crammed together with hardly any room to move, some animals often don't survive the journey. Australian sheep are kicked, beaten, and dragged off boats by their ears and legs; they are often left to suffer and sometimes die in barren feedlots. They are bound up and thrown into the trunks of cars, and they are slaughtered in prolonged and cruel ways that are illegal in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. A PETA investigation in 2006 revealed horrible cruelty in this industry. You can watch the video here.

We hope Father Mostowik has the ear of quite a few people who've yet to hear just how horribly these animals are abused.

The fact that more and more religious leaders are taking aim to relieve the suffering of animals indicates an exciting shift in public consciousness. However, these calls to action merely point the way. In order to alleviate the suffering of millions of animals who are bound for our dinner plates, archaic recreation, or clothing, the responsibility to act falls on every one of us cruelty-free peeps no matter what holidays we celebrate.

Posted by Missy Lane

I love this one.

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Regular readers know that mulesing is a process whereby sheep farmers in Australia turn lambs upside-down and cut off the skin and flesh on their rumps with a pair of gardening shears and without any pain relief. Now there are reports that Australian Wool Innovation (AWI), in response to PETA's campaign to end mulesing, has developed another new mulesing alternative, but being hopeful of progress by AWI is something that makes me nervous to no end.

This alternative is an injection that smoothes out the animals' skin (when it's all full of folds, maggots can hatch and eat the sheep alive). The injection is not perfect—the animals are still stressed out from being handled—but it seems relatively painless, which is a huge step forward in embracing the concept that less pain doesn't equal no pain).

We won't break out the champagne yet. In 2004, AWI agreed to end mulesing by 2010, but they've been dragging their heels disgracefully. Then they developed a different (but still very painful) type of skin-removal technique called "clip mulesing," in which big clips are clamped onto lambs' bottoms so tightly that the flesh dies and falls off, and called it "humane." Rotting, dying skin. Ewe.

So we raised a ruckus in the clothing retail industry, causing companies like H&M, Perry Ellis, and Adidas to reject all wool from mulesed lambs (including those mulesed using the hideous clips).

The injection, however, just might be a most-welcome forward movement for all those Aussie lambs.

Posted by Matt Prescott

Love it!

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Here’s the big news I was hinting at in the last post: H&M, which recently pledged to stop buying wool from Australian sources that still use the mulesing mutilation (essentially, slicing up sheep’s backsides), has set off a chain reaction throughout Europe: Following H&M’s announcement, 17 other major Swedish retailers have made the same pledge, and a coalition of 31 European retailers have announced that they are considering or have decided to stop using wool from mulesed lambs. On top of all this, 10 Danish retailers have withdrawn their support of mulesing, and the Western Australia Department of Agriculture has announced that it will stop mulesing.

What does this all add up to? The total amount of cancelled orders of Aussie wool from Europe as a result of these decisions comes to 550,000 bales of wool. This is a big wakeup call to Aussie wool farmers who continue to mutilate lambs, and a strong message to wool industry executives that their continued refusal to adopt humane practices will directly affect their bottom line.

For more information on the fallout from this recent outcry against the Australian wool industry, here’s the letter that PETA President Ingrid Newkirk sent to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last week:

This one made me laugh out loud.

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“Lucy” the sheep is at it again. Today, she joined Aussie Prime Minister John Howard on his morning walk in Sydney, and she’ll be making regular appearances again soon. I mean really, how can Australian politicians ignore the issues of mulesing and live export when there’s an activist in a giant sheep costume everywhere they go? Umm, OK, don’t answer that.

“Lucy” the sheep

And here’s a story about the newly formed PETA Australia. Yes, I said PETA Australia! More news on that front soon . . .

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.

I think it may be time for a Gladiator, Quills, and Walk the Line marathon this weekend, because two-time Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix has taken time away from promoting his upcoming films We Own the Night and Reservation Road to write to Australian Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran about the cruel treatment of sheep by the Australian wool industry.

Phoenix focused his letter on the two worst abuses sheep face in Australia: mulesing and live export. In case you’re not familiar with these two terms, here’s a quick explanation. Mulesing is a painful procedure in which gardening shears are used to cut skin and flesh from lambs' backsides without any painkillers. It is a crude and cheap effort to reduce maggot infestation, even though humane methods exist. Every year, millions of Australian sheep discarded by the wool industry are shipped to the Middle East and North Africa. They are crammed onto multi-tiered ships where they suffer amid the waste of thousands of other animals for weeks on end. Many suffer and die from smothering, starvation, heatstroke, injuries and disease. Each year, tens of thousands of animals die en route—almost 40,000 sheep died in 2005 alone.

Check out Phoenix’s full letter here, and join him in writing Peter McGauran here.

This story was being considered for a web feature, but I grabbed it for the blog because I found it to be incredibly moving. Please share Marcie’s story with your friends and family who still wear wool . . .

When a PETA member found Marcie languishing at a decrepit Colorado farm, she was sick, frightened, and going blind. She had been used as a breeding machine her entire life, and had endured the anguish of having all of her babies taken away as soon as they were born, sometimes even to be killed right in front of her.

After the farmer agreed to relinquish Marcie, she was taken to the Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary, a refuge for abused and neglected animals. There, for the first time in her life, Marcie knew kindness instead of cruelty. She was given wholesome and plentiful food and the veterinary care she so desperately needed. But Marcie, shell-shocked and traumatized by her past, never fully recovered.

Despite the best of care, the damage was done: Marcie lost her sight within a year of her rescue. She was terrified of people—it was a year before shelter staff could even touch her—so she sought comfort and security among the goats at the sanctuary. In an effort to “hide,” Marcie camouflaged herself in the resident goat herd, forging a fast friendship with her bovid cousins.

In her final years, Marcie found contentment and peace. But for millions of sheep farmed for their wool, there is no happy ending.

In Australia, where most of the world’s wool comes from, the misery for sheep begins when they are only weeks old. In a misguided attempt to prevent maggot infestation, or flystrike, farmers carve huge chunks of skin from the backsides of millions of lambs a year—without any pain relief—in a crude mutilation called mulesing.

For 200 years, Australian farmers have intentionally bred, and continue to breed, merino sheep who have extra wrinkly skin because more skin means more wool and more profits. This extra skin collects moisture, urine and feces and attracts blowflies which lay their eggs in the wrinkly folds of skin. The hatched maggots can eat the sheep alive. Rather than spend the extra time and money on effective and humane methods to prevent flystrike, many farmers choose to simply cut the wrinkly skin off from the backside of lambs because it is cheaper and easier than caring for them properly.

Shearing is also a painful, frightening ordeal. Shearers are usually paid by volume, not by the hour, so they work as quickly as possible, leaving sheep bruised and bleeding. The untreated wounds can attract flies and become infected. Terrified sheep who don’t “cooperate” are often beaten and kicked into submission. When they are no longer profitable for their wool, Australian sheep are often shipped thousands of miles to the Middle East, where they are dragged off trucks by their ears and legs, kicked in the face, and have their throats slit while they are still conscious.

So, what can you do? Please, don’t ever buy any wool. Choose cotton, acrylic, polyester fleece, and other durable, stylish, and warm fabrics. Find sources of animal-friendly clothing at the PETA Mall and in our cruelty-free clothing guide. And click here for more ways to help.

As promised, here’s this week’s DeFlocked comic by Jeff Corriveau. I love it.

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Check out last week’s comic here, and click here to learn all about the world of DeFlocked.

Update: Amusing as it is, it looks like this story may not have been entirely factual. Makes me feel a bit sheepish. Thanks to Amy and Canaduck for pointing that out!

Apparently, thousands of rich Japanese women were conned into buying lambs as pets, believing them to be super valuable miniature poodles. No, I’m not kidding. This insane scam was brought to light when Japanese movie star Maiko Kawakami complained on a talk show that her new poodle refused to bark or eat dog food. Another couple found out the truth when their groomer told them that she couldn’t cut the “poodle’s” nails, umm, because they were hooves! As funny as these people’s clueless-ness is, the sad part is that the aftermath of this scam is that hundreds or thousands of sheep have been left to God only knows what fate.

Sheep	Poodle

It reminds me of the way people in this country jump on the bandwagon and buy purebred puppies because they match the drapes in their new house, because they’re trying to make their lives look like a picture from an LL Bean catalog or because the latest Disney movie makes the kids beg for one. Then, a few months later after the novelty has worn off, the dogs wind up in shelters, or worse, on the street. This whole poodle thing is really no less absurd than the dalmatian craze that swept the US after the 101 Dalmatians sequel came out a few years ago and the clown fish craze after Finding Nemo.

It’s funny that this story came up now, as next week is national Be Kind to Animals Week, and to celebrate we’ll be highlighting one simple thing per day we can all do to make the lives of our own companion animals better and to help animals nationwide. But I want to start a little early. Let’s all agree not to buy sheep as house pets. If we can all agree to do that, I think we’re on the right track . . . OK, yes, now I’m kidding.

With The Pretenders set to play Sydney, Chrissie Hynde made a quick stop to unveil a new PETA ad designed to draw attention to a gruesome procedure that Australian lambs are subjected to. The launch comes just a month after Pink narrated our video exposé of the wool industry. This ad isn't exactly PETA's most lighthearted work, but the procedure, which involves an Australian farmer, a frightened lamb, and a pair of gardening shears, doesn't really allow for a whole lot of levity. Chrissie, whose tireless dedication to helping animals is nothing short of heroic, unveiled the ad at the Sydney Opera House today. Incidentally, this is why I don't wear wool.

There's been a whole lot of controversy recently about our campaign against some lethal experiments conducted at two Oregon universities on a number of out-of-the-closet ovine Oregonians. The experiments, which involve attempting to change the sexual orientation of sheep before dissecting their brains, raise a number of complex ethical issues—as well as some really basic ones like "don't torture sheep." Here to explain exactly where we stand on the issue is PETA's own brilliant Research Associate, Shalin Gala, with an open letter in response to the experiments:

PETA's Open Letter in Response to OSU and OHSU's ‘Gay Sheep’ Experiments

After being outed by PETA for their cruel and deadly hormone-altering tests on gay sheep, experimenters continue to mislead the public as to the troubling implications of their work.

Experimenters Charles Roselli of Oregon State University (OHSU) and Fred Stormshak of Oregon Health and Science University (OSU) have failed to address ethical issues pertaining to their deadly hormone-altering tests on gay sheep and the tests' implications for humans. PETA will continue to scrutinize these and any other experiments to ensure that both animal and human interests are protected and represented. ... [More]