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Everywhere eyewitnesses from PETA affiliates go, they see the same disturbing behaviour. This time, a visit to a massive sheep farm in Australia – the world's top wool exporter – revealed cruelty to sheep similar to that documented in the last couple of years at dozens of farms and shearing sheds across Australia, the US and Argentina. Shearers were rough, careless and violent, hurling sheep several feet off the shearing platform, slamming them to the floor, kicking them, twisting and standing on their necks, and more.
One shearer stamped on a sheep's face a dozen times before tearing off one of the animal's horns. Another worker, after kicking a sheep in the face several times, said to the petrified animal, "You lay down again, you cunt, I'll kill you". The observer saw that same worker jam his finger into the anuses of two sheep to drive them up a ramp to the shearing stand.
As has already been documented on many farms, the shearers' rough handling and carelessness left sheep with gaping wounds. One sheep's leg was turned into an oozing, bloody mess by a shearer who inflicted a wound nearly 0.30 meters long that appeared to cut to the bone. To the eyewitness's knowledge, this sheep was never provided with any veterinary care.
One supervisor slammed a lamb against the wooden floor and then threw the young animal into a paddock to die. One shearer laughed as the dying lamb kicked and convulsed in the dirt.
After one sheep had what was thought to be a heart attack while being sheared and died soon afterwards, a shearer performed mock CPR on the animal just to be "funny". The sheep's remains were then fed to the supervisor's dogs. Another sheep was held to the ground, stabbed in the throat while fully conscious, butchered and fed to the crew. When one worker tossed the sheep's pelt – with the head attached – onto the fire, another worker joked, "That was my robe, cunt".
The eyewitness also documented mulesing, a gruesome mutilation that continues to be widely performed on lambs on Australian sheep farms, despite industry "promises" to phase it out. A supervisor and a worker mulesed up to 80 lambs and sheep each day – using shears to cut chunks of flesh off their backsides as they writhed in agony. The eyewitness did not see any painkillers administered to the sheep.