Wool: Australia's Secret ShameCurrently exploiting more than 100 million miserable sheep, Australia produces 30 percent of all wool used worldwide. Australian ranchers perform a barbaric operation-called "mulesing"-where they force live sheep onto their backs, restrain their legs between metal bars, and, without any painkillers whatsoever, slice dinner-plate-sized chunks of flesh from around their tail area. When sheep age and their wool production declines, they are of no use to wool farmers and so are discarded for slaughter. This results in the cruel live export of 6.5 million sheep every year from Australia to the Middle East and North Africa, where sheep are crammed aboard multitiered open-deck ships. Nearly 800,000 sheep enter the live export trade from the U.K. and are slaughtered abroad.
