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Exploiting more than 100 million miserable sheep, Australia produces 30 percent of all wool used worldwide. Holdings consist of thousands of sheep, making individual attention to their needs—and even to medical emergencies—impossible.

In Australia, the most commonly raised sheep are merinos, who are specifically bred to have wrinkly skin, which means more wool per animal. This unnatural overload of wool causes many sheep to collapse and even die of heat exhaustion during hot months, and the wrinkles collect urine and moisture. Attracted to the moisture, flies lay eggs in the folds of skin, and the hatched maggots can eat the sheep alive. To prevent this so-called "flystrike," millions of lambs are mutilated each year by having chunks of skin and flesh cut from their backsides—without any pain relief—in a practice known as "mulesing," even though humane alternatives are available.

When sheep age and their wool production declines, they are of no use to wool farmers and 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 on multitiered ships and transported thousands of miles through scorching heat and freezing cold on extremely crowded ships—only to have their throats slit in filthy, open-air markets while they are still conscious.

Click here to read details of PETA US's investigation into the cruel live-export industry.

Please boycott Australian wool until the cruel practices of mulesing and live export are stopped. Use the form below to send a letter to the Australian Agriculture Minister asking for a permanent ban on the cruel practices of mulesing and live export!

Personalized letters always work best. Feel free to use the following text, but your message will carry more weight if you write your own customized message and subject line.

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