Sheep no longer good for harvesting wool may be loaded on board a cargo ship and sent on a months-long voyage overseas to countries that will likely inhumanely slaughter them. For example, the sheep on board the ships are treated like cargo. If the sheep do not eat, get sick, injured, trampled or die in the overcrowded conditions they may be
thrown overboard or ground up “alive” in macerators onboard! Those sheep that do survive the stressful, horrific journey may be tied by the legs and dragged off the ship onto trucks.
Ultimately they reach the slaughterhouse where their throats are slit while they are fully conscious and left to bleed out and die. Many countries overseas have not legislated humane slaughtering practices, like “stunning” the farm animals before the slaughtering process begins. On the other hand, the governments that have legislated humane farm animal slaughtering procedures turn around and allow its farm animals to be shipped to countries that do not protect its farm animals from inhumane slaughtering practices.
Consider this next time you purchase wool products. Purchasing wool products condones the hideous cruelty of the live-export trade and mulesing. Mulesing is a too often gruesome procedure of getting wool off sheep whereby plate-size chunks of sheep flesh are carved off the backsides of unanesthetized sheep. The bloody wounds too often get infected and infested with maggots, called flystrike. The wounds may cause intense pain and suffering.
SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: ANIMAL TIMES MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2004