Speedo-Wearing Sheep Strikes

PLEASE, PETA - get all your facts completly right before issuing campaigns about sheep mulesing. Take it from an eyewitness - yes, mulesing is harsh and painful, but it is, in the long run, far kinder than dying slowly over a matter of weeks from agonising fly strike. PLEASE work WITH famers to find a solution - they really do have the animal's best interest at heart - not against them! Yes, in the past sheep were bred to yield more and more wool but those days are past. Mobs these days are smaller and on the whole, much better tended than ever before. Australian farmers (I am not one but have worked and lived on sheep stations) are, in the whole, extremly careful in the handeling of their flock - this is their livelyhood, after all, and they act professionally and humanely at all times, as distressed animals are not financially viable and are, above all, DISTRESSING. Believe it or not, the majority of Aussie farmers are avid animal lovers - as are most farmers everywhere - why work with animals if you don't like them? It is far easier to get a job pushing a pen in an air-conditioned office than to slave away at a physically hard job on a farm with the extremes of weather and markets. They do it because they LOVE it and they CARE for the animals. And live exports - yes, ban them - but not cold turkey. Allow time to give Australian farmers and government to put the infrastructure in place and find an alternative. No need to cripple remote farming regions that supply the sheep and cattle (and are too far away from civilisation to have any other form of income stream) - be POSITIVE and help build sustainable, HUMANE industries that are to the benifit of all- animals and humans.