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Adidas—the second-largest sporting-goods manufacturer in the world—has just taken steps to reduce the suffering of sheep in its supply chain.

Following nearly four months of discussions with PETA, Adidas has now decided to boycott all wool from mulesed lambs—including those mulesed using clips.

Frank Henke, Global Director of Social and Environmental Affairs for Adidas, told PETA: "Adidas has given a clear briefing to its development and sourcing teams to not use merino wool from sources where mulesing practices are applied. Clip-mulesing is also rejected by our internal policy. … [W]e would select another material unless we obtain clear confirmation from the source that mulesing practices were stopped."

As some readers might know, mulesing is a standard mutilation used by Australian woolgrowers in which lambs have huge chunks of skin and flesh carved from their backsides with big, metal shears (like gardening shears). This gruesome procedure is used in a misguided attempt to protect sheep from maggot infestation, despite the fact that humane methods (e.g., in which animals’ skin isn’t removed) exist.

In an attempt to win back clothing retailers that are boycotting Australian wool over this issue, some farmers have started using clips to mules their animals. Clip mulesing involves clamping clips onto the animals' skin so tightly that the skin dies and falls off. This method still causes pain, but is not bloody (and therefore less visually shocking), which lead the Australian wool industry to hope that it would be acceptable to clothing retailers. But Adidas—like HUGO BOSS, Perry Ellis, H&M, and many other companies—is not buying this new mutilation … which is great news, since it will help animals today and push the Australian wool industry to stop all forms of mulesing once and for all.

This decision by Adidas comes just one week after Australia’s Federal Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke, wrote a publicized letter to Adidas thanking it for supporting Australian wool and trying to justify the mulesing mutilation to them. Bad timing, Mr. Burke.

Three cheers for Adidas for refusing to support unnecessary and cruel lamb mutilations down under!

You can help! Take a few seconds to sign our petition urging the Australian Prime Minister to help put an end to mulesing immediately.

--Matt

Posted by Matt Prescott, Assistant Director of Corporate Affairs

Following discussions with PETA about the extremely unpleasant habit that Australian Farmers have of mutilating lambs in their care, Hugo Boss has announced that it will phase out the use of Australian wool that comes from lambs who have undergone the mutilation. Here’s what they said:

"HUGO BOSS disassociates itself from mulesing because it contravenes our corporate values … [and] has decided to phase out the use of wool from farms that perform mulesing—including clip mulesing. Should mulesing not have ended completely by 2010, HUGO BOSS will refuse to purchase wool material from farms that perform mulesing."

Hugo Boss isn’t the only company to make such a compassionate decision this month—IC Companys (the massive Danish clothing retailer), has also pledged to get all their wool from outside Australia until the Aussie sheep farmers can figure out a way to raise animals that doesn’t involve slicing them up with gardening shears. Both companies have also rejected the ridiculous “clip mulesing” alternative, which involves using clips to clamp down on the sheep’s skin so tightly that it dies. So the farmers are going to have to figure something out that’s actually humane. We’ve got tons of suggestions.

I hope everyone had a pleasant Thanksgiving holiday. Mine would have been pretty close to perfect if it hadn’t all been tainted by yesterday’s sad events in Tampa Bay. But the show must go on, and though it may not seem like it right now, there are more important things than the apparent inability of the Washington Redskins to throw accurate passes inside the 20-yard-line. For instance: While half the country was busy stuffing their shopping bags with every piece of fabric they could find this Friday, a number of animal lovers around the U.S. spent their holiday reminding shoppers that—as much as their rabid consumerism helps America—there are plenty of ways of doing that without hurting animals, and that it’s the easiest thing in the world to buy comfortable, stylish clothes without fur, leather, or wool. Here are a couple of the pics that ended up in my Inbox this morning—the first is from a Fur-Free Friday demonstration outside the mall here in Norfolk, and the second from a great demonstration in Miami Beach.

This one's a beauty. For more info on PETA's campaign against the Australian wool industry, click here.

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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 . . .

It’s not like we need another reason to boycott the Australian wool industry, what with mulesing and live export and all that already. But as if those things aren’t bad enough, I just learned that to keep the wool very fine and soft, some Australian farmers actually keep their sheep inside giant warehouses in individual pens that are kind of a cross between veal crates and battery cages.

Here’s a story about it, if you’re interested reading more. And more importantly, here is a link to our campaign to clean up the Australian wool industry once and for all.

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.

You know what I’m saying? Seriously, it just makes me happy to be alive. Her name is Annamarie, the place is Fresno, and there was evidently a bit of a traffic jam for a while. As Annamarie puts it, "I’ll gladly bare some of my skin if it will help save animals’ skins. With all the luxurious alternatives available, there’s absolutely no excuse to wear animal skins."

And finally, in the interest of fairness, here are some boys too.

I'd love to announce this as an official PETA victory, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the MLB's decision to get rid of all their wool caps in favor of a polyester blend has more to do with the suffering of sweaty baseball players in the heat than with the suffering of merino sheep in the wool industry.

Whatever their motives, though, this is a big deal for sheep like those in Australia who are horribly mutilated at the beginning of their lives and crammed onto ships to be slaughtered in countries with no animal welfare standards at the end. Whether the major league baseball players know it or not, they're doing the right thing by ditching the wool in favor of a humane alternative. So I, for one, applaud them. Except the Yankees. (Like most Orioles fans, I still haven't forgotten 1996.)

Anyway, there you have it—some great news for animals from the MLB. And now, for those of you who'd like a little more info about the issue, here's an important educational video that my friends Joel, Marta, and I made a little while ago. But please do remember, before you watch it, that you will never get those 21 seconds of your life back.

Pretty much anyone with an ounce of compassion knows that wearing fur is somewhere between contemptible and downright wicked on a scale of 1 to evil—and most people have an inkling that the process of making leather isn't exactly a walk in the park for the cows involved (the live dismembering part in particular can be unpleasant). But until now, the wool industry has done a bang-up job of keeping its gruesome practices from the public eye. Which is why we're incredibly grateful to Pink for coming out and letting her millions of fans know what's really going on.

Today, Pink launched her video exposé of the Australian wool industry before her concert in Paris and called for an international boycott of Australian wool until the shocking abuses documented in the video are ended. You can click here for ways to help sheep, and watch Pink's disturbing but important video below.