Veganism, genuine questions.

Searching for info on this showed that it is done to many merino sheep, but the Australian The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) agreed in 2004 to phase it out.

What happens (as a once-off) is when the sheep are collected and marked, that a strip of skin (not chunks of flesh) is removed from each side of the anus so that the healed scar tissue smooths out the wrinkles in the skin. Merino sheep have a lot of wool and a very wrinkly skin. Flies strike in the wrinkles and can kill in two weeks.

There is a push to breed sheep with fewer wrinkles and with less wool around their bum to get mucky. Full instructions on how to rate your sheep for wrinkliness of skin and hairiness of arse are in the article at
www.agric.wa.gov.au/livestock-parasites/managing-non-mulesed-sheep

Hi Phoenix
Lots of good wishes to you too.

I read about it online.
They're mad, totally bonkers.

I hope I don't have a restless night thinking of the poor sheep, cotton pickers and silkworms whose products fill my mattress and the 3 sheepskin rugs on my bedroom floor.

Australia is showing no sign of phasing out mulesing, despite agreeing to do so more than ten years ago. The only thing that will make a difference is boycotting Australian merino wool. Some companies do - I believe John Lewis is one of them so they certainly take it seriously, and Australian wool growers are concerned that the Italian fashion industry is uneasy about the practice and this is affecting orders.

Cutting off strips of skin from lambs’ bottoms sounds quite benign really. It is usually done at the same time as castration, tail docking, ear tagging, all without anaesthetic. Not surprisingly, the lambs often go into a state of shock soon afterwards and are in pain for days. This information is widely available on the internet, as are photographs of the disgusting practice. We can try to tell ourselves it’s not that bad but actually it is that bad; or it’s only a minority of cases, but that’s not the truth.

Would you want kitten -skin or puppy- skin rugs on your floor?

Some of you doubt how much supermarkets control food production.
A friend of mine produces Milk for Tesco they control everything, welfare control is absolute, milk is tested every day, every cows vet record is inspected and they have to be vaccinated against a whole range of illnesses. Tesco also insist on access to financial records for “ Benchmarking” purposes, so they control how much ( or how little) money you can make.

The same applies to all UK produced food the controls are very tight. There was a chicken processor in the West Midlands last year, publicized for breaking hygiene regulations, they lost the supermarket contracts and went bankrupt.

Every animal is tracked from birth and if an identity is lost it becomes unsaleable, so livestock are far more controlled than we are and much more traceable .

I wonder if those who would count themselves true environmentalists would give up the pill as contraception, or refuse to have medication when sick or in pain?

The residue from these things is known to be detrimentally affecting stream life (and often coastal areas and sea life ) as we evacuate it into the sewage system - which never truly gets rid of it.

As for wool not being 'essential' - if you have a severe allergy and skin problems which means you can only wear natural products, such as cotton or wool - then it certainly is.

We can never get it totally "right" whatever regime we follow.
Even this drive to stop using plastic bags, now means we will need more trees for the paper bags which are replacing them. Some paper is made from rags but only a tiny percentage.

More trees are good for the environment Bradford

David I am broadly on your side, but you are overdoing it. In any system things go wrong and there are cases of things going wrong in both treatment of animals and where there meat comes from. Think back to the horse meat scandal.

Supermarkets have always supported industrialised meat production methods, they were not in the forefront in improving welfare conditions for either battery hens or pigs reared in pens. With the exception of Waitrose, they have not come out against the industrial rearing of cattle and dairy cows in sheds. They have accepted all these providing high standards of cleanliness, food quality etc etc are met, not whether the methods, run against the normal needs of cattle to graze, be outside etc.

The reasons I am pulling caps with you is the same reason I am doing the same with the Vegans, asking questions about prevention rather than banning, and the morality of moving slugs and snails into a hostile environments so that they cannot escape predators.

But, as ever, when I ask pertinent questions on other threads, these are ignored by those who should know the answers, but clearly do not.

Crystal, if i had a favourite cat or dog who had died, why not make it into a rug, although cushion would be better. It is not unknown for someone to have a pet recreated by a taxidermist.

Having to bring in skinned kittens and puppies means using sentimentalism instead of care for animal welfare. And animal welfare, oddly enough, can include raising then considerately as food and granting them a humane end.

Conservation suffers from the same sweetiepieness. People go spare over a cuddly mammal or an iconic picture book animal going extinct but are not concerned about the many species of less engaging creatures that vanish daily, some of them contributing a great deal more to the normal running of the planet and the biodiversity on it.

M0nica, you make plenty of good points about both animal husbandry and what we eat and the correlation between the two.
Unfortunately, some people are wedded to cheap meat and will always find a way to justify it.

We are (most of us) fortunate here that we have options. I am hoping that the surge in veganism will at least bring some good recipes out of the vegan closet and into the mainstream. If those people who aren't totally wedded to cheap meat choose to eat meat less often, maybe the meat they do eat will be organic/welfare friendly.

Absolutely, that is exactly what I am hoping will happen.

I am fortunate, my mother did not particularly like meat (although my father did) and I grew up in a home where vegetable based and meat based dishes both played their part in home cuisine and I never experienced a home where meat was the be all and end all of eating.

I am still waiting fro a vegan to respond to the points I have raised (again) in the post above.

Skin too is flesh and when nerve endings are exposed through through loss of skin there is much pain. There is also infection as skin is one of the body's barriers against infection.

The wool industry is often cruel although dairy cows arguably have a worse deal from us.

www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-clothing/wool-industry/mulesing/

Yes, the process is horrible, but worldwide what proportion of sheep suffer this and why do vegans not just campaign to have it banned?

Unfortunately, some people are wedded to cheap meat and will always find a way to justify it.

Wedded to cheap meat?? What does that mean?.

Some people cannot afford organic free-range products but somehow they have to feed their families!

monica I am not sure why you keep banging on about the morality of feeding slugs to birds. If you have an issue with a particular person who does this why not take it up with them. I do not do this and I don’t think it’s something that every vegan has said they would be doing. I am not sentimental about slugs, they have their place in the natural world and that’s about it. I’m not sure what other questions you have asked which have not been met.

Is it only vegans who should be campaigning to have mulesing banned Monica? Shouldn’t we all be concerned about widespread torture of animals?

Of course vegans are campaigning to have this and many other things banned. That’s why they get accused of forcing their opinions on others, or even of being vegan terrorists. Can’t seem to win.

I am not suggesting that campaigning to stop mulesing should be limited to Vegans, It is as you say an issue that should be supported by everyone, and even if I drop the slug question, which I think is a bit of a cop out, what about wanting to always ban things rather than reform and improve.

To repeat. We regularly hear of people whose lives have been ruined by botched surgery, but I have never seen anyone demand that the solution to that is to ban all surgery. The demand is for better supervision, trainnig etc, to reduce its incidence.

I don't think anyone is saying that only vegans should be campaigning for good welfare, it is just that some of them, and some vegetarians, do maximise the amount of bad welfare that is around, and treat animal stockmen as universally sadists and torturers, They would have more effect if they toned it down a bit while finding and praising examples of good husbandry in the industry for others to copy.

Breeding should help keep down flystrike - sheepfarmers were keen enough to breed for longer and thicker wool coats, now they need to work on this. I am sure many of them are doing just that.

Of course, breeding for a particular feature means that there are unwanted lambs which don't fit the spec. What happens to them is another matter.

Find good examples of animal husbrandy ? Thatwould only encourage people to keep eating animals. I have never committed an act of terrorism in my time as a vegan. As for forcing my views l get far more pro eat meat messages directed at me via the media.

monica I think you need to improve your analogies. Slugs and surgery? The purpose of surgery is not to deliberately kill and eat or exploit the patient. Surgery is done for the benefit of the patient, and as such should be regulated and only undertaken by professionals who are highly trained and well paid. I don’t think it has any similarity to industrial farming which is only interested in turning a profit, not done for the benefit of the animal.

crystal you are a master (or is it mistress) of getting the wrong bull by the horns. I am not talking about 'industrial' farming, I am talking about farming in general, why campaign to ban something, like harvesting wool from sheep because in some cases it is badly and savagely done. Why not campaign for harvesting practices be improved?

Hello all, and thank you for the responses.

Just like to say, that my own sheep were shorn with great care by our contract shearer, apart from one, that did end up with a bit of a nick.

In fairness, she was a right stroppy thing! You could do anything with her, vaccinate, worm drench, dip etc, she was fine, but try to sit her on her bottom for foot trimming or shearing she went into meltdown! I tried to warn the semi retired chap, the first time he came to us, but he wouldn't listen. He ended up on his a*se, with the ewe looking smug.

The following year when he came, he decided to do her first, get it over and done with.

The nick that she had was quickly sprayed with terramicin and she was fine.I

I fully understand that not all sheep are treated as mine were, and any maltreatment of animals is to be abhorred.

I've watched shearing and most shearers are excellent and do a good job - and the sheep seem most relieved to have their warm coats removed.

any maltreatment of animals is to be abhorred.
I agree and should be stamped out.

Can I ask chrystal and the other vegans and vegetarians - are you happy with entirely chemical fertilisers for arable fields and what alternatives are there for soil restoration?

One of the drawbacks of arable land which has only been fertilised with chemicals is that it degrades badly as farmers discovered in the 1960’s and 70’s. Fallow fields (herbal leys) need to be grazed to start with and then are usually mown for hay. But hay won’t be needed anymore. Neither will there be sheep to eat off sugar beet tops (and produce their own fertiliser). And no free range pigs rootling and cleaning the soil (whilst mucking it). And of course, no cows will be kept in during the winter to provide the wherewithal for muck spreading.