Having lived in Australia my whole life, and been friends with many farmers personally, I can honestly say that the outrage against mulesing (cutting off the butt-skin) is due mostly to lack of direct experience with flystrike (myiasis) and ignorance, especially for the conditions we have here. I understand, truly, that it's a pretty awful thing to do - just going and cutting off a flap of skin around the lamb's butt - but once you've seen those poor animals suffering flystrike (it only takes a day or two for bacterial infection after the maggots have hatched, not to mention the maggots eating the lamb's flesh)... and in many instances, it's just not feasible for the farmer to adopt an alternative, due to cost or less effective measures against flystrike.
In WA (where we live), they're supposedly helping the farmers now, and erradicating the practice of mulesing. As long as it works, that's great news, as far as we're all concerned, but I will always support mulesing over letting the sheep suffer flystrike. Cutting a small amount of skin off of each lamb could never be as cruel and disgusting as not doing enough to protect them from flystrike. Never.
There's always more to the story than *some people* would believe, or tell you. Not to be rude, but so many vegans don't seem to get it- they want to protect the animals, but can't understand that sometimes what they think are "bad things" do just that.
In WA (where we live), they're supposedly helping the farmers now, and erradicating the practice of mulesing. As long as it works, that's great news, as far as we're all concerned, but I will always support mulesing over letting the sheep suffer flystrike. Cutting a small amount of skin off of each lamb could never be as cruel and disgusting as not doing enough to protect them from flystrike. Never.
There's always more to the story than *some people* would believe, or tell you. Not to be rude, but so many vegans don't seem to get it- they want to protect the animals, but can't understand that sometimes what they think are "bad things" do just that.
~Ashlee
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