That Christmas Jumper Just got Uglier: New Video Shows Wool Industry Workers Cutting, Punching, Stamping on Sheep

For Immediate Release:
14 December 2017

Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327, ext 222; [email protected]

THAT CHRISTMAS JUMPER JUST GOT UGLIER: NEW VIDEO SHOWS WOOL INDUSTRY WORKERS CUTTING, PUNCHING, STAMPING ON SHEEP

PETA Releases Footage Shot at Shearing Sheds in Australia Showing the Continuing Cruelty to Sheep

London – A PETA Asia video exposé of the wool industry in Australia – the world’s biggest wool exporter – shows workers violently punching sheep in the face, stamping and standing on their heads and necks and beating and jabbing them in the face with electric clippers. The eyewitness also documented that large, bloody wounds were left on the animals’ bodies, which workers stitched closed using a needle and thread without administering any pain relief.

The video exposé highlights just some of the cruelty observed at each of the four shearing sheds visited by the eyewitness in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia’s top wool-producing states.

When PETA exposed rampant cruelty in shearing sheds across Australia in 2014, the video evidence resulted in landmark convictions of shearers on charges of cruelty to animals. At the time, the wool industry even said the abuse must stop immediately – but this most recent PETA Asia exposé shows nothing has changed.

Life for British sheep is no easier. Wool producers subject lambs to painful mutilations – including castration without painkillers – and it’s considered normal in the wool industry for between 2 and 3 million lambs to die each year from starvation or hypothermia as a result of exposure.

“Sheep are gentle animals who are petrified of even being held down, yet these sheep were punched in the face, kicked and stamped on, and had their heads slammed into the floor by unsupervised, impatient shearers, causing the sheep great distress and injury,” says PETA Director Elisa Allen. “PETA is calling on shoppers around the world to reject cruelty to animals – and that means never buying wool.”

Broadcast-quality video footage is available here. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.

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