Bendigo Billboards Urge Sheep Farmers to ‘Baack’ Away From Animal Agriculture

Just in time for the Australian Sheep and Wool Show – the largest of its kind in the world – which hosts parades and shearing competitions that exploit gentle, non-consenting animals, PETA has installed digital billboards around the city encouraging those working in the industry to move away from cruel, environmentally disastrous sheep farming and switch to arable, vegan methods.

Everyone needs farmers, but farmers don’t need to exploit animals and interfere with their bodies – for wool, meat, or milk – which is why we encourage them to hang up their shears and leave the heartbreak and violence of sheep farming behind. Since live-export ships carrying sheep – many of whom are used for wool and sent for slaughter overseas once their production drops – are due to be grounded, now is the time for sheep farmers to transition to kinder, greener, and future-proof industries.

PETA entities have released seven exposés of facilities in Australia’s wool industry, and abuse was documented at each of the 40-plus farms and shearing sheds visited around the country. Eyewitnesses have filmed shearers beating sheep with clippers, punching and throwing them, and standing on their necks. In one Victorian shearing shed, a worker cut the vaginal prolapse of a female sheep – who was likely in labour – before using her own wool to wipe her blood off the floor. Once a sheep’s wool production declines, the industry deems them useless, and they’re sold for mutton or into Australia’s controversial live-export trade.

Australia’s existing vulnerability to drought and bushfires is being exacerbated by desertification: the country is home to the only deforestation hotspot in the developed world, mostly due to land-clearing for breeding and raising grazing animals like sheep. Because merino sheep are unnaturally bred to generate excess wool, they’re prone to flystrike, and Australian farmers subject them to live-lamb cutting (also known as mulesing), a barbaric practice in which workers cut swathes of flesh from the animals’ buttocks, usually without pain relief, in an attempt to prevent it. PETA’s billboard urges farmers who raise sentient beings for their fleece or flesh to transition to sustainable plant farming and grow nutritious vegetables, grains, pulses, and fruits that are kinder to animals, the planet, and our health instead.

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