Sydney Morning Herald, Friday, 11 March 2005
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/The-unkindest-...

The biggest fight at January's Australian Open tennis tournament wasn't between Lleyton Hewitt and Marat Safin. Those concentrating on the tennis may have missed the off-court grudge match between the tennis legends Martina Navratilova and Margaret Court.

In need of protection?: despite mulesing being carried out on millions of sheep each year, most Australians had probably not heard of it until October last year.
(Click Image to Zoom)

It had nothing to do with tennis, but rather an annual ritual in the paddocks of Australian farms that is inspiring provocative billboards across America, outrage from a prominent Indian MP, condemnation from rock stars and actors and, today, a court hearing that may lead to legal landmarks.

Navratilova opened by taking a swipe at the wool industry's practice of mulesing sheep to protect them from flystrike.

Mulesing is where the skin around a lamb's backside is cut off so it develops a bald breech area. It stops the accumulation of faeces and urine in wool that creates a paradise for blowflies to lay their eggs. Flystrike occurs when the maggots hatch then burrow into the flesh of sheep - effectively eating them to death.

Navratilova, in a letter to the Prime Minister, John Howard, said mulesing had been brought to her attention by PETA - the controversial American group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "Harvesting livestock is one thing, but cruel and unusual infliction of pain in that process is another; it is ethically and morally wrong," she said.

Court, a West Australian woolgrower, was quick to return serve, suggesting Navratilova get educated with a visit to her farm. "I don't think she fully understands the issue. People in the city generally don't understand the problem of blowflies in sheep."

Despite the fact that it is carried out on millions of sheep each year, until last October most Australians had probably never heard of mulesing. It is named after an Australian stockman, J.H. Mules, who invented the procedure in the 1930s.

The wool industry says there is no viable alternative and up to 3 million sheep a year could die "horrible" deaths if mulesing was banned. PETA says the practice could end tomorrow if Australian farmers weren't so frugal. There are many alternatives to a procedure it says is "tantamount to partially skinning the animals alive without anaesthetics".

Mulesing hit the headlines when PETA pursuaded the popular US clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch to boycott clothes containing Australian wool until mulesing was eliminated. The group has since claimed similar success with other prominent US and European clothing businesses. Not long after the Abercrombie & Fitch news, the wool industry announced it would stop mulesing by 2010.

Baled up ... PETA's worldwide campaign against the practice of mulesing sheep in Australia will be tested in court.

Millions of dollars are being spent on research into alternatives. The blowfly genome is being mapped to try to identify weaknesses. Another promising development is a protein that can be injected into the breech area. It causes the treated skin to contract and cease growing wool.

But such efforts mean little to some PETA sympathisers overseas.

Maneka Gandhi, an Indian MP and the daughter-in-law of the late prime minister Indira Gandhi, recently wrote to more than 250 Indian retailers asking them boycott Australian wool because "we do not need the blood of Australian sheep on our hands".

Other retailers such as Italy's Benetton have resisted calls to boycott Australian wool despite its stores being picketed by sometimes scantily clad female PETA demonstrators carrying signs saying "Benetton: Baaad to Sheep."

PETA doesn't pull any punches and it has even been accused of aiding animal liberation groups that are considered terrorist organisations. It paid for a prominent billboard in New York last year that depicted a lamb being mulesed and carried the words: "Did your sweater cause a bloody butt?" The group uses celebrities, regularly disrupts fashion shows to protest about fur, and one of its members once dumped a racoon on the lunch plate of the US Vogue magazine editor, Anna Wintour.

The anti-mulesing campaign is affecting Australia's struggling $2.5 billion-a-year wool industry, with wool brokers reporting some clients have started to request wool from unmulesed sheep. Now the industry is seeking to strike back at PETA, using the so-called "secondary boycott" provisions of the Trade Practices Act.

Today, the Federal Court in Sydney will hear the industry's application for an order to stop PETA threatening companies into boycotting Australian wool. The industry wants PETA to pay for advertising to recant the allegations it has made about mulesing.

The court action has many supporters in rural NSW and could prove to be a legal landmark. First, it could test whether Australia's trade practices laws can be used to sanction people who live and act overseas. PETA has no official presence in Australia. Second, it could test whether trade practices laws can be used to silence what many regard as healthy political debate.

The NSW Council for Civil Liberties has pledged its support for PETA in the case on the grounds that the wool industry is trying to curb freedom of speech. Its president, Cameron Murphy, says the wool industry's case is equivalent to James Hardie suing the Premier, Bob Carr, for calling for a boycott of Hardie products because of the way it treated asbestos victims.

"It would be a dangerous precedent," Murphy says. "[In the Trade Practices Act] secondary boycott is there to stop a business unfairly boycotting another business. This situation is quite different. It's people expressing a point of view about the way animals are being treated. People should be free to debate these issues."

The executive director of Animal Liberation NSW, Mark Pearson, says the industry is also trying to draw his organisation and two of its directors into the legal action over comments made about mulesing.

Animal Liberation has also called for an end to mulesing and says 20 per cent of Australia's woolgrowers are using humane alternatives.

Pearson says multinational companies such as McDonald's have spoken to PETA about improving animal rights and he believes the wool industry should do the same.

But the man leading the wool industry's charge is not one to surrender. Ian McLachlan - a former Howard Government defence minister and hardline former head of the National Farmers Federation - is rural aristocracy and one of Australia's biggest woolgrowers.

He is also chairman of Australian Wool Innovation Limited (AWI), which will spend $89 million this financial year trying to improve the plight of the wool industry. Most of its funding comes from a levy on wool bales.

Spelling out the body's decision to launch legal action last year, McLachlan said: "AWI will not stand by and allow PETA to publicly distribute scurrilous half-truths about the Australian wool industry and its practices. Clearly, PETA does not have an understanding of the animal-welfare cost and economic damage inflicted by the Australian sheep blowfly. PETA's simplistic claims that crutching and the use of chemicals can eliminate or control blowfly strike are clearly misinformed. AWI ... will do whatever is necessary to protect and uphold the reputation of the fibre and the way it is produced."

Underlying the industry's actions is the belief that PETA will not stop its campaign at mulesing and cannot be reasoned with. It believes PETA will next turn its sights on tail docking, shearing and finally sheep farming itself.

The RSPCA has welcomed the announcement that mulesing would end by 2010 and says that in the interim it should be the last - not the first - option for controlling fly strike. The Australian Veterinary Association has also welcomed an end to mulesing, but recognises it as still necessary.

The Federal Government has given its full support to the wool industry. The Agriculture Minister, Warren Truss, has even canvassed penalties to deal with "extremist animal rights-related violence and intimidation".

Within the wool industry, mulesing and the fight with PETA has caused division. Many businesses with heavy interests in wool have declined to join the legal action for fear that it could take years, cost millions and work in PETA's favour regardless of the outcome.

A Walcha woolgrower, Martin Oppenheimer, is one of many AWI farmer shareholders angry about the organisation's "crazy" legal action, which is "way outside of its charter" of research and development. Last year, Oppenheimer stood unsuccessfully for the board of AWI on a platform that included opposition to how the organisation was dealing with animal rights.

Rather than treating animal rights groups with contempt, Oppenheimer says the industry should sit down with them. "This law case isn't going to help us ... sell more wool," he says. "It's really just helping PETA and their cause. There's a great deal of anger out there that we have been let down by our own organisation."

Oppenheimer muleses his sheep because he says there is still no viable alternative, but "we have got to change what we are doing". "This issue was highlighted more than 10 years ago as a possible threat to the industry and still we did nothing - no new technology. The legal action is really just to hide our industry's inaction."

A meeting was to have taken place this week in New York of representatives of the wool industry, retailers and PETA to discuss mulesing, but PETA pulled out because the industry insisted on no media coverage.

Robert Pietsch, a leader of the wool industry taskforce set up to deal with mulesing, said: "The fact is that you can't have a free and frank exchange under the glare of media spotlights."

A PETA spokesman said: "PETA's policy is transparency. The wool industry prefers to lurk in the shadows and keep their consumers in the dark about their cruel practices."

But Pietsch responded: "The reason PETA won't sit down and talk about the issue of mulesing is that its arguments and pseudo-science on this issue do not withstand scrutiny."

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