Bunghole Crutch Outrage

Ovine Rights protest PETA mulesing mauling

MUDGEE ~ Australian branch of Ovine International expressed alarm at PETA's campaign against sheep mulesing.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) have the Australian sheep industry on notice to eliminate mulesing by 2010, a deadline the industry will find difficult due both to entrenched farm practices among the 70,000 graziers who lack easy alternatives and painfully slow progress in genetic research.

Sheep fear loss of livelihood or mass unemployment and resent the gross infringement of their ovine rights, denial of religious expression, and even fashion freedom.

PETA's campaign has international retailers boycotting wool - Abercrombie and Fitch, J. Crew in London, and New Look in New York - driven by an international campaign against Australian wool with a series of enormous billboards in Manhattan showing graphic images of a mulesed sheep with the words "Did your sweater cause a bloody butt? Boycott Australian wool."

"It's our bloodied crutches that got those slick Italian Woolmark suits into upmarket New York salons" exclaimed outspoken bellwether (and SheepOverboard Ovine correspondent) Ewen Shearer. "Like denying Jews or Muslims circumcision, or forcing human sex professionals to work with their breech unshaven, this is an outrageous assault against world's most populous animal minority.

"Like scrapie, pain is in the eye of the beholder. Just as you never hear a man claim his life was ruined by the trauma of willy-snipping ('circumcision,' also done without anesthetic - Ed), neither are ovines hapless victims of animal cruelty in this department. Far from it, PETA!"

"Temple Grantin (Animal Science, Colorado State U.) claims sheep as prey species hide injury and pain for survival. Anecdotal science, I would suggest. Of course we feel the pain, but it doesn't cause distress - it's in our breeding. Some humans have discovered pain management and many holy men demonstrate it - as have medical specialists, with self-hypnosis controlling pain during conscious surgery sans analgesic.

"The only downside of 'mulesing' is the unfortunate accident of history in the originator's name, with consequent stigma of a cherished sheep ritual seemingly linked in some arcane way with sterile horses." Shearer said.

"It's every hogget's right, and desire, to be seen bare-breeched -swine are born that way! And those ridiculous PETA billboards of blood-soaked mutton butts. Most ewes in lambing consider it a badge of honor!"

(Further outspoken comments have been withheld to protect sensitivities of more gentile readers - Ed.)

Australian graziers are between a rock (Uluru) and a hard place (New York). Falling wool prices and a shortage of value-added processing capital threatens to collapse the fleece demand precipitously, reducing the Australian wool industry, which dominated the world market for nearly a century, to a mere boutique affair.

Professor Phil B. Hynde from Animal Science at South Australia's Adelaide University is working on a solution that uses the sheep’s own enzymes to produce a permanent wool removal solution. "We know a protein that works (a sheep's enzyme), it’s painless, it replicates mulesing, it's cheap, ... and we’re working with Australian Wool Innovation and some engineering companies .. for a method to .. quickly, effectively, and safely, apply the product."

Hope arises from a little-known Ovine sect on Australia's Eyre Peninsula. Practicing genetic selection through decades of carefully prearranged marriages, the sect claims natural mulesing - to the envy of fashion studs world-wide.

"The Calcookara Sect has managed the equivalent of perfect ageless buttocks in humans. Imagine being a woman who never needing surgery because your breasts were perfect, while all others could only attain them through dangerous painful surgery, practiced by people with no medical or veterinary qualifications," elucidated Ewen Shearer.

"Or, to ram the point home, imagine being born with the perfect, non-sagging buttocks - a natural genetically-acquired fashion accessory!"

The process of mulesing came about because blowflies are attracted to the feces and urine that accumulate in the folds of skin on a sheep's backside - skin folds bred into sheep to increase wool-producing capacity. This mutation has not only removed the wool in the bunghole region but also the excess skin. In the Calcookara Stud all the skin under the tail is tight with no excess wrinkles or skin folds.

"They are perfect. We call them the 'Bunghole Crutch sect,' " said Shearer.

Shearer hinted at Ovine Rights International countering PETA's lambaste of Australian Wool, which was considered a a petulant and ill-informed swipe at Ovines in particular and ruminants in general.

"Firstly, we will ask the the leading question: 'Where are the animal rights people with 90% of the world's humans living in poverty and more than half of these living an interminably miserable, hopeless, and many times fearful, existence?' "

"Second, have PETA and ilk noticed 99% of farm animals, pets, circus creatures and laboratory volunteers enjoy lives of absolute luxury, the animal-equivalent of a human in a Hilton penthouse??

"Third, do they (animal liberationists) want centuries of animal sacrifice negated? It's our (non-human) prime directive to lay our sad lives, limbs, fins and feathers on the line, and our sad little room-temperature intellects, so that human living standards might excel. Why? Obviously, as human health and well-being improves so does ours. Duh!"

"Haven't the animal welfare protagonists missed the obvious? In societies with enhanced well-being and high living standards (based largely on animal research), huge benefits flow to sub-species. Farming, circus, research and companion taxonomies in such countries enjoy a comfort zone envied by 70% of humans - those living in deprived regions.

"Our anti-PETA campaign, not to give too much away, will highlight humans abusing humans.

"Our covert activists have amassed enough compelling images in this area to blow PETA out of the whale-infested water.

"A truly ironic example, one tiny facet of humanity's inhumanity, involved the mulesing of a human female dubbed 'Merino Lady' that shocked the Ovine world.

"PETA's hypocrisy is exposed in the harsh light of such disgraceful treatment of humans, so why are they on about sheep?

"Pampered celebrity circus animals have long sniggered at the human freak shows dragging sorry asses (literally) around the country. Groomed and nutritiously-maintained pets are frequently nauseated by culinary and sexual appetites of their masters. Laboratory volunteers are sickened at research workplace harassment of junior technicians by domineering scientists or administrators .. the list is endless.

"We want PETA to explain to us - before destroying our livelihoods and that of our symbiotes, the graziers - that this ill-conceived and ill-informed campaign of spite has exactly WHAT to do about the 'human' problem?

"What about human slave trafficking, asylum-seekers, refugees, child soldiers, police and army torture, the death penalty, war criminals, overflowing human jails, the weapons trade, illicit diamond trade, piracy upon the high seas, violence against women, children's rights, human fetal abortion, prisoners of conscience, racial profiling, religious hatred and intolerance, state-supported terrorism and warlords, pollution, global warming, wars over territory, wars in general ... I'm just getting started!

Shearer fired a final salvo:

"Ignoring the human condition suggests unresolved personal issues among animal liberationists who, it might seem, still suffer the trauma of fairy-tale childhoods shattered by adulthood. Repelled by the horrors of humanity out of control they take the easy way, attacking commerce instead of crime, ignoring the great human social issues of our time with this trivial diversion."

"Are they agent-provacateurs, perhaps of governments or vested interests, employed to distract the populace from inequities in the human world? Surely they can see animals comprising companion, entertainment and consumer support for human society enjoy protective benefits concomitant upon contractual symbiosis?

"If you must ignore human tragedy by dabbling with non-sentients, save endangered species - don't dump on our parade!"