PETA Package

I haven't posted about PETA in quite some time, so I have quite an arsenal today. Steve of Ad Rants has two of them, and it just keeps going from there.

I'll highlight one from Ad Rants. Painted Cows become billboards.

Golden Palace, that purveyor of online gambling and supreme stunt advertiser, has dyed several Florida county cows with with its name. And to stave off PETA, they dyed "Go Veg" on the side of one of the cows.

This clearly signifies it's time for Wendy's to resurrect "Where's the beef?"

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Benneton cannot escape PETA in Australia. The topic? Sheep torture. The picture's priceless. More naked people in paint. This time, solids. I'd imagine that's a quicker paint job.

Oh, wait, where was I? The Australian Wool Growers Association signed a deal with PETA that'll end a 10-year PETA boycott. Which probably means another industry is about to get bombarded. At issue is the practice of mulesing, which I had never heard of. Gory photos will give you a different picture than Wikipedia, which states that there's no effect on underlying muscle tissue. I'm assuming that's when the practice is done right.

Lambs are normally mulesed a few weeks after birth. After the operation, which takes one to two minutes, the lambs continue to behave normally. Because it is a skin snip, there is little blood loss from the cut other than a minor ooozing on the edges of the cut skin. Lambs rarely die or become ill after mulesing.

Lambs are mulesed onto clean pasture. The ewes and suckling lambs receive minimal disturbance until all wounds are completely healed (about 4 weeks). Observation is generally only at a distance.

Mulesing should be completed well before the flystrike season or else chemical protection should be provided to reduce risk to the lambs and ewes.

What else does Wikipedia have to say?

A viable alternative to mulesing has to ensure the health and well being of the lamb (many alternatives have proved to have disastrous side effects). It also has to be safe for the people carrying it out, and leave no residues in the meat or on the fleece. It certainly has to cause no more pain than mulesing and to be acceptable to the farming community both ethically and financially.

Non-surgical alternatives to mulesing currently being researched include topical protein-based treatments, selective breeding, organic insecticides and biological control of blowflies.

Merino sheep live productive lives of around eight(8) years. That means any mulesing alternatives need to be tested for a minimum of eight years to ensure the safety of the sheep and of the people who have to come in contact with whatever is used. So far, no alternative method has proved satisfactory and acceptable.

Breeding alternatives are very slow, even if GMO techniques were allowed (which is unlikely).

The eradication of the strike fly is not a viable alternative. Banning wool production would remove one of the most ecologically friendly agricultural systems for much of Australia. Farmers are currently trying to reduce the use of chemical protection in the interests of the ecology of wool processing countries

PETA's page. I could spend about 6 posts poking fun at the language of this one, even breaking out the Persuasive Attack and Defense course book.

Sheep farmers have reason to fear. Baaaaad.

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Finally, remember, Being Boiled Hurts. Ow.

hln

Posted by hln at August 9, 2005 02:17 PM | PETA! | TrackBack