New Footage: Workers Kick, Stamp On and Mutilate Sheep on This Massive Australian Farm
Yet again, eyewitnesses have documented the abuse of animals in the global wool industry.
Investigators visited a huge sheep farm in Australia – the world’s top wool exporter – and found the same disturbing behaviour that has been witnessed at dozens of farms and shearing sheds across Argentina, Australia and the US.
Shearers were rough, careless and violent, hurling sheep several feet off the shearing platform, slamming them to the floor, kicking them, twisting and standing on their necks and abusing them in other ways. As has already been documented on many farms, the shearers’ rough handling and carelessness left sheep with gaping wounds. The eyewitness also documented a gruesome mutilation that continues to be widely performed on lambs on Australian sheep farms, despite industry “promises” to phase it out.
Some of the particularly disturbing incidents included the following:
- One shearer stamped on a sheep’s face a dozen times before tearing off one of the animal’s horns.
- After kicking a sheep in the face several times, another worker said to the petrified animal, “You lay down again, you c***, I’ll kill you”.
- The same worker jammed his finger into the anuses of two sheep to drive them up a ramp to the shearing stand.
- One sheep’s leg was turned into an oozing, bloody mess by a shearer who inflicted a wound nearly a foot long that appeared to cut to the bone. To the eyewitness’s knowledge, this sheep was never provided with any veterinary care.
- One supervisor slammed a lamb against the wooden floor and then threw the young animal into a paddock to die. One shearer laughed as the dying lamb kicked and convulsed in the dirt.
- After one sheep had what was thought to be a heart attack while being sheared and died soon afterwards, a shearer performed mock CPR on the animal, just to be “funny”. The sheep’s remains were then fed to the supervisor’s dogs.
- Another sheep was held to the ground, stabbed in the throat while fully conscious, butchered and served to the crew. When one worker tossed the sheep’s pelt – with the head still attached – onto the fire, another worker joked, “That was my robe, c***”.
- A supervisor and a worker mulesed up to 80 lambs and sheep each day – using shears to cut chunks of flesh off their backsides as they writhed in agony. The eyewitness did not see any painkillers administered to the sheep.
It’s hard to watch these gentle animals suffering. But sadly, it’s not surprising. After so many shocking videos from investigations of wool producers all over the world, we know that this type of cruelty is completely normal in this unscrupulous industry.
There’s no getting away from it: the wool trade hurts animals. That means that wearing wool hurts animals. Please don’t support the abuse of sheep – say no to wool, and keep warm this winter in cosy, ethical non-animal fabrics instead.
