Outdoor Ad Companies Reject Easter Plea for Government to Show Mercy by Ending Mulesing, Live Exports

For Immediate Release:
14 April 2006

Sydney – PETA had hoped its new billboard opposing Australia’s cruel treatment of sheep – which shows a blood-soaked lamb on a crucifix with the tagline "Have Mercy on Them. Stop Mulesing and Live Exports" – would be up in time for Easter, but outdoor advertising companies want no part of it. The compelling ad was created and donated to the group by award-winning, world-famous British political cartoonist and caricaturist Ralph Steadman and uses the symbol of Easter, the lamb, in an appeal to the government to end mulesing and live exports.

Mulesing is a painful mutilation in which farmers use gardening shears to cut skin and flesh from lambs’ backsides – without painkillers – as a crude (and cheap) way to reduce the risk of maggot infestation from blowfly strike, even though humane alternatives are already in use by farmers throughout the country. Each year, millions of Australian sheep whose wool production has declined are disposed of by being shipped thousands of miles through all weather extremes on crowded, multi-tiered ships to the Middle East and North Africa. Thousands of sheep die en route, and those who survive are typically killed by crude methods which would be illegal in Australia.