HORROR: This Looks Like a Normal Sheep Farm… But Here’s What’s Really Happening Inside

24 Nov, 2015 by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Print this article Font size -16+

I love animals. I always have. But I consider PETA to be very close to a terrorist organization in word and deed. They have evidently taken video showing Australian wool manufacturers being cruel to lambs and adult sheep. Undoubtedly, some of that is true. Their footage however is grainy and most of it is not easily discernible. I did see sheep being slammed and thrown. Sheep are bloody from being shorn and treated as well. Peta is now calling for people to stop wearing wool, just as they did fur. That’s insane. The answer to the horror of what is done on some of these sheep farms is not stopping wool production… it is instilling more humane treatment of the animals. The abusers should be severely dealt with and the companies fined, but it’s just nuts to do away with a prime source of warm clothing. Polyester just doesn’t cut it folks. By the way, I don’t have a problem with fur if it is taken from animals that were going to be slaughtered anyway. Sue me.

From the Daily Mail:

A tiny lamb is slammed against a solid wooden floor before being tossed, writhing in pain, into a paddock to die.

Moments later, a traumatized sheep is kicked a dozen times in the face before having one of its horns violently torn off.

Crueler still, workers laugh callously at the suffering they are inflicting.

These sickening images have been released to expose the horrifying reality behind an industry most believe is cruelty-free – the wool industry.

In a damning video, obtained by Daily Mail Online, hurried workers can be seen hurling sheep several feet off the shearing platform, slamming them to the floor, kicking them, twisting and standing on their necks.

The vile footage, released by animal rights organization PETA, shows one shearer kicking a sheep in the face repeatedly before jamming his finger into the anuses of two sheep to drive them up a ramp to the shearing stand.

A supervisor is filmed slamming a lamb called Morgan into the hard floor before throwing the youngster to a separate area to die.

As little Morgan kicks and convulses in the dirt, one shearer can be heard laughing in the background.

Another worker is caught on camera stomping on the face of a sheep named Alex a dozen times before tearing off one of the animal’s horns.

The video was taken by an undercover investigator who visited a massive sheep farm in Australia – the world’s top wool exporter.

At the farm, in the small town of Coober Pedy in South Australia, the shearers work so quickly and carelessly that many sheep are left with gaping wounds.

One sheep’s leg can be seen turning into an oozing, bloody mess by a shearer who inflicted a wound nearly a foot long that appeared to cut down to the bone.

According to the undercover investigator, the sheep was never provided with any veterinary care.

Instead, injured sheep were shot in full view of their companions.

One was even butchered, and the body left where other sheep could see it, the investigator said.

The eyewitness also reported that he saw ‘mulesing’ – a gruesome mutilation that continues to be widely performed on lambs on Australian sheep farms – taking place.

Mulesing, which is still common despite industry promises to phase it out, involves farmers forcing live sheep and lambs on to their backs with their legs restrained by metal bars then using shears to cut chunks of skin and flesh off their backsides—as they writhe in agony.

The practice is a crude attempt to prevent maggot infestations – also known as flystrike – although many sheep who have undergone the mutilation still suffer slow, agonizing deaths from the condition.

PETA said that less cruel and more effective methods of prevention are readily available, but many farmers refuse to use them.

[…]

The animal welfare charity is now calling on people to take the ‘#WoolFreeWinter pledge’ – and opt to wear vegan and animal friendly clothing instead.

They are launching a million-dollar advertising campaign to inform consumers that wool is just as cruel as fur.

As well as advertisements, activists will be holding protests across the country with ‘bloodied sheep’ and signs reading, ‘Here’s the Rest of Your Wool Sweater.’

The charity, whose motto is ‘animals are not ours to wear’, will lead demonstrations in Los Angeles, New York City, and other cities across the US on the biggest shopping day of the year, Black Friday.

The charity says it will be the biggest push for cruelty-free shopping since its famous ‘I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur’ campaign in the early ‘90s – which saw supermodels and actresses such as Christy Turlington and Pamela Anderson stripping off for the cause.

A spokesman for PETA said, ‘These abuses are not the actions of a few bad apples.

‘Time and time again, when PETA or one of our affiliates has taken a closer look inside the wool industry, egregious abuse has been uncovered.

‘Shearers are often paid by volume, not the hour, which encourages fast, violent work that can lead to gaping wounds on sheep’s bodies, which workers stitch close – without giving the animals any painkillers.

‘In the past 16 months, PETA has released five exposés recorded at 37 facilities on three continents, each revealing that sheep are mutilated, abused, and skinned alive—even for “responsibly sourced” wool on so-called “sustainable” farms.

‘PETA’s international expose of shearing sheds and ranches in Australia and the U.S., revealed that workers punched sheep, beat and jabbed them in the head with sharp metal clippers, kicked them, poked them in the eye, twisted their necks and threw them against the floor.

‘Terrified lambs, taken from their loving mothers, cried out before and during their first shearing.

‘”They’ve been separated from their moms and they’re calling for them,” one worker explained. “They’re going, ‘Mom! Mom!'”

‘Whenever animals are viewed as nothing more than commodities to be turned into wool coats or scarves, fur trim or leather boots, cruelty will always be a part of the production process.

‘Sheep suffer immensely in the wool industry, and no amount of fluff can conceal that fact.’

PETA said it had recorded harrowing animal rights abuses at 37 sheep farms and shearing sheds in the USA, Australia and Argentina since 2014.

Investigations into ranches in Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska found workers beating and twisting the necks of sheep until they died.

One shearer was caught kicking a sheep head first down a chute – where she died.

Another bounced his bodyweight on dozens of sheep’s necks and poked his fingers into their eyes.

Earlier this year, California-based clothing company Patagonia announced it had stopped buying wool following a disturbing video of workers in Argentina slitting lambs’ throats and skinning them alive.

The PETA video showed workers on so-called “sustainable” farms in Patagonia’s network of wool suppliers kneeling on conscious lambs and sawing through their necks.

I feel for these poor animals and the guys abusing them… I can’t even begin to say what should be done to them. The practice of Mulesing is barbaric and I am sure there are medications that would be much more humane. Yep, they cost money, but you stop profiting from sheep if they die as well. There is no excuse for the abuse of these animals, period. PETA pulling on heart strings though saying the lambs are crying for their mommies? Give me a break. Shear them and return them to their mothers. I hate to break it to PETA, but it is cruel NOT to shear a sheep as well. It gets filthy and collects fauna that carries disease. The correct and humane way of shearing sheep benefits both the animal and humans. But mass cruelty is something else and needs to be stopped. There is a right way to do a sheep farm and a wrong way. These people are doing it wrong and they are doing it out of greed.