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

[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.