Everywhere eyewitnesses from PETA and its affiliates go, they see the same disturbing behavior. This time, a visit to a massive sheep farm in Australia—the world’s top wool exporter—revealed cruelty to sheep similar to that documented in the last couple of years at dozens of farms and shearing sheds across Australia, the U.S., and Argentina. Shearers were rough, careless, and violent, hurling sheep several feet off the shearing platform, slamming them to the floor, kicking them, twisting and standing on their necks, and more.
As has already been documented on many farms, the shearers’ rough handling and carelessness left sheep with gaping wounds. One sheep’s leg was turned into an oozing, bloody mess by a shearer who inflicted a wound nearly a foot long that appeared to cut to the bone. To the eyewitness’s knowledge, this sheep was never provided with any veterinary care.
One supervisor slammed a lamb, named Morgan by PETA, against the wooden floor and then threw the young animal into a paddock to die. One shearer laughed as the dying lamb kicked and convulsed in the dirt.
The eyewitness also documented mulesing, a gruesome mutilation that continues to be widely performed on lambs on Australian sheep farms, despite industry “promises” to phase it out. A supervisor and a worker mulesed up to 80 lambs and sheep each day—using shears to cut chunks of flesh off their backsides as they writhed in agony. The eyewitness did not see any painkillers administered to the sheep.
