Yeah, employees. Right.

[msmcknittington]

So, I just read this post on Ravelry, and my head nearly exploded. For those who can't go there, it's a thread about Australian wool being cruel because of mulesing. Here's the post:

If the climates and pest situations are so different, why are people raising sheep there in the first place if the environment isn’t suited to them? It’s like trying to start a massive pineapple farm in Canada and then building a gas-powered greenhouse to suit it. There are clearly better solutions.

Honestly, there are so many other great yarns out there to knit with that I could be a happy knitter for years without getting wool. I also know that for no reason should a small (or large) business have a right to cause unnecessary pain solely because of the bottom line, and operate my own animal-related business in the same manner. When you’re in this business, the animals are your employees and you have to treat them as such- benefits, vacations, and all.

Bolding mine, of course.

Yeah, 'cuz when you own your employees and they're considered property, it's called slavery. Vacations? What the fuck? You can't go, "Hey, Bossie! Enjoy your weekend! Hope you don't get mastitis!" Because livestock are not people. They never will be!

Stop anthropomorphizing, goddammit.

Comments

[stayfree.livejournal.com]

I know bugger all about farming and sheep, but from my limited understanding mulesing is the lesser evil and farmers would prefer not to do it if they had a reasonable alternative. There's been a fair bit in the papers about numerous boycotts because of it.

As for raising sheep in this country, well it's been done successfully for a couple of hundred years now, so I'd say that it is suited. Sheep as employees? That's a novel way to look at it...!

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

Well, obviously I know bugger all about Australia, given there's most of a continent and an ocean between me and you, but that's pretty much what the shepherds have been saying about mulesing in what I've read. That it's better than seeing them have their hind ends eaten by maggots.

>Sheep as employees? That's a novel way to look at it...!

How do you get a sheep to sign a contract? Are they unionized? Do they get get two breaks for every eight hour shift?

[stayfree.livejournal.com]

With all the the hours that sheeps clock up, they'll be asking for long service leave soon!

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

Vacations? That's just awesome. I don't know, the thought of the sheep booking a long weekend to Key West because they "need to get away from work for a while" just cracks me up. Because it's so damn stupid.

It can be really easy to anthropomorphize animals, especially pets. I'm guilty of it all the time with my dogs. But I do also recognize that they're DOGS, and their needs/desires are much different than mine. And I'm ultimately responsible for their care, because in a lot of ways they can't do it themselves.

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

I know! I can't help but think that she's going to come back and say that the couple months every year that dairy cattle are dry is a vacation, and not, you know, an opportunity for them to get pregnant. Or that time that sheep spending growing a fleece is a vacation.

I'll get behind animals needing vacations just as soon as they start paying taxes.

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

Hah! When Gambit takes up too much room on the bed and gives me the sad eyes when I shove him over, I tell him he can have more of the bed when he starts paying the mortgage. See what I mean about anthropomorphizing my pets? ;-)

[isabelladangelo.livejournal.com]

Kinda going off the two comments above:
Does the farmer/shepherd get to go on vacation with the sheep? Because I know Miss Ginsie would NOT want to go on vacation without me! Okay, maybe she would but it would be with my Mom and/or Dad then....aka "Camp Grandma". No anthropomorphizing there, huh? :-)

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

Heh. I was actually thinking that most farmers don't get to go on vacation every year, or when they do, it's a weekend away somewhere, not two weeks on the beach.

[cmtigger.livejournal.com]

I'm not even a full fledged farmer and I can't get away for more than a few days, and usually even then I have one or more of the animals with me.

[h0taru.livejournal.com]

It's these dumbasses who give "general animal lovers" (and hell, vegetarians etc) a bad name. Jesus Christ.

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

Yes. And I know that not everybody is that stupid.

[h0taru.livejournal.com]

The "Jesus Christ" was meant to the dumbass who made that post, not to you. I realized it could go either way. Sorry!

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

Oh, that came out snippier than I intended. No apology needed, because I wasn't offended!

[jljonsn.livejournal.com]

Having never raised sheep, I was unaware of this proceedure. The practice seems quite unpleasant, but the blowfly infections look far more so. One of the links on the Wiki article from the wool industry perspective has extremely unsettling video.

I'm certain the shepherds would rather do without, but there seems to be no viable alternative, and there's a lot of people in Aus who are dependant on the industry.

Regarding anthropomorphizing; ya, everyone does it, but people these days are so isolated from farming as children that they have trouble dealing with the realities of food and animal product production. My brother had a pet steer named "Fred". He was delicious.

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

It's not really done outside of Australia, because the flies there are lot more vicious than the ones in more temperate climates.

>I'm certain the shepherds would rather do without, but there seems to be no viable alternative, and there's a lot of people in Aus who are dependant on the industry.

The Australian government is actually working to phase mulesing out by 2009 or 2010. There are new technologies being made available, but it's only been in the past 5-10 years that they've caught on. Which doesn't really change the fact that shepherds aren't mulesing because they think it's a hell of a good time.

>Regarding anthropomorphizing; ya, everyone does it, but people these days are so isolated from farming as children that they have trouble dealing with the realities of food and animal product production. My brother had a pet steer named "Fred". He was delicious.

That's exactly what pisses me off so much about the division between urban and rural people. People who have never lived near a farm before do so, and then they start complaining about how the smell of the manure is destroying their bucolic home.

[cigarettes214.livejournal.com]

I've heard the Sheep Union gives great dental insurance!

Oh my. This almost compares the the argument I got into with a vegan friend who thought shearing a sheep kills it. She thought that a sheep could be shorn once, then it died. Like a bee stinging and dying. It's seeming like everyone should have to do a turn through the FFA.

And this is why I tend to stay out of the Ravelry forums.

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

They're honestly not usually this bad. The vast majority of posts are utterly reasonable. It's just that when the stupid does pop up, it is dismayingly severe.

I love you icon!

[cigarettes214.livejournal.com]

Hee, hee, I always tend to stumble on the bad ones, then :D

Thanks!

[cmtigger.livejournal.com]

Like the ones where people can't understand that it's idiotic to pass a law that requires ALL dogs and cats be spayed or neutered by 4 months old?