Wool Is not Kind By Sharon L. Wallenberg

Wool grows on sheep, like hair on humans, or fur on dogs.  Most wool comes from Australia.  It is a big business and like anything else – there are winners and losers.  The winners are the corporations, and the big losers are the sheep.  Australia’s largest live sheep exporter, Emanuel Exports, recently had its license revoked after a whistle blower revealed the horrific truth about live export.                        

For decades, hundreds of thousands of sheep no longer considered profitable for wool production, have been shipped alive from Australia to the Middle East for slaughter.  More than 100,000 liters of urine and feces accumulates on a typical live export ship every day during the weeks that the sheep are on board.  The ship won’t be ‘washed out’ until after they disembark.  Any sheep who needs to lie down from exhaustion risks being buried alive in excrement.  There is no food or water for the animals, and as temperatures soar, the heat literally cooks sheep to death.  The sheep who survive will continue to suffer surrounded by the bodies of their dead companions.

Heavily pregnant ewes are shipped for slaughter like every other animal.  They will endure the trauma of live export while going into labor and giving birth.  Babies born on live export ships will lose their mothers, be trampled, or be killed by distressed crew members who are routinely ordered to slit the babies’ throats.  Weeks later, when they arrive in the Middle East, those individuals remaining alive will be slaughtered in the most horrific ways imaginable.  All this is after enduring a lifetime of suffering.

Sheep raised for wool suffer.  Shearers are paid by weight, not time.  It does not matter to them if an ear, breast, or testicle is sheared off.  The docile sheep are hit, beaten, and cursed at while being sheared.  If an animal does not survive being sheared, it is cooked and eaten in full view of the surviving sheep.   They know exactly what is happening, and that they could be next.  No medical attention is ever provided, even for the most serious conditions.

You can help stop this horrific abuse of sentient individuals – don’t buy wool.