Welcome to the Mulesing & Welfare website. The aim of this humble page is to offer you an outline of the welfare issues raised by mulesing. Mulesing, also called Mules operation, is a surgical procedure mainly performed on Merino lamb in Australia and consisting in removing the wool-bearing skin from part of the tail and breech area. It is performed in order to prevent flystrikes, a problem caused by blowflies. The operation results in a scar, a bare skin area devoid of wrinkles, less susceptible be soiled and less attractive to flies. It has traditionally been performed without anaesthetics or analgesics (Phillips, 2009).
The interest for this subject came to me totally by chance while I was surfing on the Internet. At this time, I did not even know the existence of the operation. I was first informed by the Animals Rights organizations that fight against it. Unfortunately, I felt that the information they give is not really complete. I had a hard time to find out the reasons for the procedure or the possible alternatives to it.
The shocking images and videos they also offer have the advantage to be strong enough to follow you even when you don’t want to think about it anymore. For a while, I even hesitated to work on the subject because of them. Then I started to look for the scientific studies on the subject. At that point, I realized that it is perfectly possible to tackle the subject and sensitize people to it though reasoning and scientific facts rather that through the violent emotional ones.
Therefore, you will not find here shocking pictures or videos. I will try to offer you the information and scientific facts on the practice. I hope you will be able to make your own opinion on the subject at the end of your reading.
Header photo by James @ NZ on Flickr