"Scientific studies clearly show that mulesing and tail docking are currently the most practical, effective and humane methods of flystrike prevention available to Australian woolgrowers. It eliminates almost all flystrike in sheep.

Documented studies have shown that this procedure does not cause long-term distress to the animals and infection is a rare occurrence after the procedure. The preventative procedure is only endured once by each sheep to prevent longer-term suffering caused by flystrike."
http://www.woolisbest.com/animal_welfare/mulesing.html

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Mulesing is the surgical removal of skin from the breech area of sheep to prevent flystrike.

Controversy about the practice erupted last year and, in November, the decision was made by sheep and wool industry leaders to phase out mulesing by 2010.

In the quest for alternative solutions, the wool industry, through Australian Wool Innovation Limited (AWI), is investing millions of dollars to find ways to improve prevention and control methods for blowfly strike, including a non-surgical alternative to mulesing

Dr Williams says projects funded range from development of the non-surgical alternative to mulesing to new generation insecticides, investigating the blowfly genome, bio-control agents, as well as projects to improve the use of the controls through integrated parasite management.

"Our top priority project is the method of treating the breech of sheep with a protein that causes the wool to fall out, inhibits wool regrowth and contracts the skin.

"The result is essentially the same as mulesing, a wool-free breech area with few skin folds."

A team of University of Adelaide scientists is undertaking the work, with effort now focused on developing an effective applicator for the protein and the other steps needed to get a new product to market.

"So far it looks promising and, if everything goes smoothly, we could have something ready for commercialisation by 2007", said Dr Williams.

Acknowledgement: "In the Bale", Australian Wool Innovation, January 2005.

New Device Aims to End Mulesing

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So the only possible outcome of a boycott in the immediate future is to send farmers broke?

I personally don't think they should be farming sheep anyway. They should be farming (or ranching) roos and leave sheep farming to the New Zealanders. I think most of the sheep farms are in semi arid areas where the land is very fragile.

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I don't think so. I think only ruminants do that.

I get the impression that it is only the Australian wool getting targetted and only Australian sheep farmers that do mulesing. Perhaps it is because this is the only place where sheep are grown for export in an arid environment. We tend to get a lot of flies here. I was very surprised when I was in South Africa that they didn't have flies with all the wildlife they had and the farmers could hang meet up to dry with no fly screens on the windows. It is because over there they have enough predators that there is never any dead animals lying around, not even bones. Plus they have dung beetles to take away the dung. They introduced them over here which may have helped a bit, but it is probably too dry and the dung to sparse for them to work real well.

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