Exposed Again: Crying Lambs Castrated, Cut, and Burned for Wool in Australia

PETA exposed cruelty to sheep used for wool on dozens of farms on four continents. So after all that, did the wool industry do the right thing and try not to hurt sheep so badly? 🤔 Nope. 😒

In 2018, an eyewitness working on a sheep farm in Victoria, Australia, found the farm manager and workers mutilating terrified lambs in an assembly-line manner. 😨 🐑 Australia is the world’s top wool exporter.

Then an eyewitness working for a sheep-shearing contractor in New South Wales, Australia, found workers hitting frightened sheep in the face with sharp metal clippers, slicing off parts of their skin, and roughly stitching up the wounds with zero pain relief. 😱

Come meet the sheep behind wool sweaters and blankets and see what the wool industry does to them—if it leaves you shook, you should never buy wool!

What More Do You Need to See to Stop Wearing Wool?
Sheep are gentle individuals who, like all animals, can feel pain, fear, and loneliness. But because there’s a market for their fleece and skins, they’re treated like machines.

For example, a worker put tight rings around lambs’ scrotums without anesthetics so that their testicles would shrivel up and fall off weeks later. 😰 When the testicles don’t fall off soon enough, shearers just cut them off with clippers.

Workers also punched holes in lambs’ ears and cut and burned off their tails with a hot knife, making the animals writhe in agony as flames shot up from their flesh. 😓 Once again, no anesthetics were used.

In addition to all this, many lambs die of starvation or from exposure to the elements before they’re 8 weeks old. 🥺

Lambs’ Backside Flesh Cut Off as They Writhe and Cry Out in Agony
Workers also cut off chunks of flesh from lambs’ hindquarters with shears to try to create smoother skin that won’t attract flies. But the bloody wounds often get infected with maggots anyway, causing many sheep to endure long, agonizing deaths. 😠

Lambs are prey animals who normally suffer in silence instead of drawing attention to themselves, but these animals were so mistreated that they cried out in pain and fear.

Mother Sheep Call Out Frantically as Their Lambs Are Mutilated
This cruelty occurred in full view of the lambs’ frantic mothers, who called out to them and tried to get as close to them as possible. 😢

Workers then dropped the lambs on the ground or a blood-spattered mat, where many landed hard on their bloody wounds. They cried out as they ran in search of their mothers amid the flock.

Sheep Deemed Unprofitable Die Agonizingly
The manager slit the throats of fully conscious sheep with a knife and then broke their necks. 😡 One sheep, who was slaughtered in front of another sheep and a lamb, kicked for nearly a minute after the manager began cutting her throat. The manager said that some sheep kick for a “bloody couple of minutes.”

Even those sheep who survive years of repeated, stressful shearing face an awful fate. Every year, millions of unwanted sheep are shipped on a terrifying journey from Australia to the Middle East or North Africa, where their throats are cut—often while they’re still conscious. 😭 The Australian gov has finally set a date of May 1, 2028, to end the live export of sheep by sea, but there’s no excuse for allowing them to suffer in these horrific conditions for another four years.

Help Stop This Cruelty!
Look in your dresser and closet. Are you still wearing wool? If so, please stop—you’ll help prevent countless sheep and lambs from enduring the extreme cruelty you just read about. 💗

No matter where it comes from or what B.S. assurances the industry tries to give you, wool is a product of cruelty to sheep. 🙅

Please join us in urging Forever 21 to ban wool. (While you’re at it, help get the company to stop selling feathers, too.)

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