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Navratilova campaigns against "mulesing" of sheep
Tennis star Martina Navratilova has added her voice to end the Australian practice of "mulesing" -- cutting flesh and skin from the hindquarters of sheep to prevent infestations of maggots.
Tennis star Martina Navratilova has added her voice to a US campaign to end the Australian practice of "mulesing" -- cutting flesh and skin from the hindquarters of sheep to prevent infestations of maggots.
Navratilova, 48, sent a letter to Prime Minister John Howard in support of the campaign while she was in the country for the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne.
"I wish to address a very cruel and horrific practice currently executed in your country, called 'mulesing', in which slices of flesh are cut with a pair of shears from a lamb's hindquarters without any painkillers," Navratilova said in the letter seen Thursday.
"This is a deliberate act of violence. It is pain inflicted without just cause. Do you believe such cruelty should be allowed?
"Can you imagine what kind of person would be able to inflict such pain upon a defenceless creature? Harvesting livestock is one thing -- cruel and unusual infliction of pain in that process is another.
"It is ethnically and morally wrong," she said in the letter dated Tuesday.
Navratilova called for Australia to pass laws banning mulesing.
The US-based pressure group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is running a campaign against the practice in the United States, a major market for Australian wool.
It has called for an international boycott of Australian wool, influencing several leading firms to avoid using the wool in fear of bad publicity for their products.
The Australian wool industry has been enraged by the boycott and has been seeking through legal means to stop it.
It defends mulesing, which removes skin and flesh from areas most likely to attract infestations, as the most effective way to prevent flystrike in sheep, which farmers say could kill millions of animals.
