"katie" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...
Quoted message said:"William J. Wolfe" <[email hidden]> wrote in
message
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:"Edward" <egoduk@NOSPAM_hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Hello all,
www.vegsoc.org explains that wool is not always
sheared from live
sheep - it
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:can be taken from dead sheep.
You gotta be joking. Sure it can be done, but a sheep
that dies from old age is as rare as rocking horse
manure, a sheep that dies from sickness will most likely
have a useless fleece.
Also, the RSPCA state that some sheep are cut
Quoted message said:without anaesthetic to make their skin tighter, to
improve the quality
of
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:the wool.
This is a joke, right? Do you have an anaesthetic when
you have a hair cut or trim your nails? Wool is like
hair, DEAD TISSUE. Or do you mean "cut" as castrate?
when he says 'cut', he's talking about skin, not hair : (
"On the surface, it appears that wool is a benign product
because, at least theoretically, it can be obtained
without harming the sheep.
Sheep are shorn without doing any harm to sheep. Its the
equivalent of a human having a hair cut.
However, upon
Quoted message said:closer inspection, we find that the wool industry is
actually very similar to the egg and dairy industries.
While animals such as laying hens, dairy cows, and wool-
bearing sheep are not immediately killed to procure their
salable products, they suffer tremendously for years prior
to their ultimate and unavoidable slaughter.
Sheep do not suffer, nor do dairy cows, and especially dairy
cows. Stressed dairy cows do not produce milk in the same
quantity as when they are unstressd.
Let me give you a short lesson on animals and stress. I eat
meat, ie, animal muscle tissue, white meat, fish, sheep,
pig, kangaroo and deer. Right now I have five young pigs in
a pen. These are feral pigs, caught after their mother was
shot. They were making a war zone in a cane farm. Feral pigs
can also spread disease among domestic livestock.
So now there are five orphan pigs growing fat under my care.
When I bought these future pork dinners home I enclosed them
in a pen until for a week until they settled into their new
home. They now have fresh water, shelter, food and ten acres
to roam in. One pig decided to be a trouble maker, for the
first four days running like a lunatic all around the pen,
stesing himself crazy. I had thought he would die of shock
but now he is feeding well and growing. The point is that,
in spite of the animal welfare fairy tales, animals under
strees do not give their best in producing milk, eggs, or
growth. If I kept these pigs in cramped unclean conditions
they would be susceptible to disease, they could suffer from
pneumonia, they woulf have mineral and vitamin deficiencies,
just as do humans who live in less than ideal conditions.
Quoted message said:Most people believe that sheep are overburdened with too
much wool and therefore need to be shorn. Although today's
wool-bearing sheep have thick, heavy coats, it is the
result of selective breeding over thousands of years.
These animals are descended from wild mountain sheep,
still found in some remote regions of the world, which
shed their fine woolly hair naturally. Wool provides sheep
with warmth and protection from inclement weather and
sunburn. Because our "modern" wool-bearers are extremely
vulnerable to the elements without their wool, many sheep
die of exposure shortly after being denuded.
Which can happen if sheep are shorn at the wrong time of
year, also Merino sheep do not like having thich fleeces
soaked with rain.
Quoted message said:
From the earliest of times there was complicity in the use
of wool. Merinos, which were originally from Spain, are
the most efficient wool producers. Mutton breeds, which
primarily originated in England, are used predominately
for meat. Cross-breeds are raised for the dual purpose of
meat and wool.
Cross breeds, like most compromises, do neither very well.
Quoted message said:Nevertheless, Merinos also yield mutton and mutton breeds
also yield wool. No sheep escapes either function; it is
just a matter of emphasis. Essentially, all wool is a
slaughterhouse product.
Yep, and sold as lambswool, wool with tanned sheep hide.
Quoted message said:
Wool is classed as either "shorn wool," that which is
shorn from sheep annually, or "pulled wool," that which is
taken from sheep at the time of slaughter. Horrors abound
on sheep farms, including mutilating, painful surgical
procedures that are performed without anesthesia. These
entail mulesing, the cutting of large strips of flesh off
the hind legs to reduce fly problems, and tail docking,
designed to preserve the salable condition of wool
surrounding a sheep's anus, among others.
Removing wool bearing skin from around the sheep's bum
prevents a number of life threatening problems. Sheep dung
soaked into wool attracts blow flies which lay eggs in the
[censored] wool. There is nothing more sickening than a blow fly
struck animal about to die.
A large percentage of the
Quoted message said:world's wool is produced from Merinos exported from
Australia.
Actually, bugger all comes from exported Australian sheep.
These sheep
Quoted message said:are crammed onto ships by the tens of thousands, crowded
into filthy pens, and packed so tightly they can barely
move. As a result, thousands of sheep die each year from
suffocation, trampling, or starvation.
What you have is a distorted partial truth. You really do
need to make sure you have the full story here. The reality
is that middle eastern countries buy Austrlian sheep for
food. They are transported to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for
slaughter. Once the animals have left the Australian farm
the Austraian farmer is not in any way responsible for what
happens to the animals, in the same way that general Motors
is not in any way responsible for the way you drive one of
their vehicles after you buy it.
Quoted message said:
Sheep shearers are paid by piece rate, meaning that speed
not precision guides the process.
Actually, if you don't manage to get your act together and
shear with speed AND precision, you don't shear at all.
Consequently, most sheep are roughly handled,
Bullsit. Rough handled animals panic, stress and are bloody
hard to control.
lacerated,
Quoted message said:and injured during the process.
No they aren't. You start chopping holes in stud Merino rams
and you kiss godd-bye to your pay cheque and your future
shearing contracts.
The production of wool, as with all
Quoted message said:industries that consider animals as mere commodities, is
rife with cruelty and abuse. In addition, the purchase of
wool supports the continual slaughter of millions of lambs
and sheep each year."
"In the U.S., most wool comes from either domestically
raised sheep or sheep raised in Australia and New Zealand
(American Sheep Industry Association). Sheep raised for
wool are bred to have lambs who are sent to slaughter;
Not necessarily true. When you mate two stud Merinos you
aren't going to send a potential future prise stud to the
lamb chop factory.
Quoted message said:sheep whose wool / lamb production has started to decline
are also slaughtered (SFAP, 1998). Over 500,000 sheep and
lambs in the U.S. died from predation in 1994 (USDA). In
turn, sheep ranchers kill predators such as coyotes.
Sheep and lambs are subjected to harsh weather
conditions, with over 100,000 dying from weather-related
causes in 1994 (USDA).
You Americans need to learn how to look after valuable
animals.
The Model
Quoted message said:Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals for Australia
& New Zealand (1995) allows for tail docking, castration,
and surgical removal of skin folds without anesthesia.
All farm animals are denutted without anaesthesia. If you
feel the need to feel shock at the tohought of this,
remember how you gently handled yourself the last time you
did yourself an injury. Pain is a way of telling you to be
gentle with yourself.
Shearing sheep causes bruising and cuts
Quoted message said:(Agriculture Western Australia, 1997)."
yeah, and sometimes the sheep leave teh shed with a few
blade cuts as well. Bruised shearers learn to avoid
flying hooves.
