Letter: Does using wool involve cruelty?

Image: ICN/JS

Re: ICN 14 July 2022 - Green Funerals by Virginia Bell from Laudato Si' Animators - www.indcatholicnews.com/news/45095

Fr Robert Miller comments: Your item on green funerals today has Virginia Bell suggesting that using wool involves cruelty. Not necessarily. Sheep are valuable. She might be comforted if she sees the relief of a sheep after the seasonal removal of a heavy and hot fleece, released to produce more wool next year.

Virginia Bell replies:

In answer to Robert Miller, who implies that sheep enjoy being sheared, I'd like to point out that domesticated sheep are purposely bred to grow massive amounts of wool that they would never grow naturally. The weight and ordeal of growing all that wool is a cruelty in itself.

Sheep are terrified when they are handled.

Shearers are not paid by the hour but by volume, which encourages many of them to work fast at the expense of the sheep's wellbeing. They have repeatedly been seen hitting and kicking sheep. Hurried and careless shearing often leads to severe injuries, which are only patched haphazardly without the use of painkillers. Tails, teats, ears, and strips of skin are frequently cut or ripped off for the sake of time and money.

From the day they are born, sheep in the wool industry are subjected to the most horrendous cruelty. Lambs have their tails chopped off, and when a male lamb's castration fails, shearers often cut the testicles off with clippers.

Wool is a global commodity, and the UK imports millions of kilograms of wool each year.

Here in the UK, about 16 million lambs are born each year. Between 2.4 and 3.2 million of them die from disease, exposure and neglect, about 15-20% (Defra).

As a result of the burdens put on sheep, they suffer endemic lameness, miscarriage, infestation and infection. Often, they will die before a farmer even realises anything is wrong.

More than 50% of the world's merino wool originates from Australia, a product that is used from clothing to carpets. A merino lamb has to endure a gruesome procedure called "mulesing," in which huge chunks of skin from the animals' backsides are cut or torn off. An agonising ordeal. This mutilation is completely unnecessary and if anything, only predisposes sheep to disease and parasites.

Apart from the cruelty involved, raising sheep for wool uses up precious resources, causes pollution and drives loss of biodiversity and climate change.

LINK

PETA: www.peta.org.uk/issues/animals-not-wear/wool/