Remember to always look into PETA’s claims. Living a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle is a personal choice and I applaud those who do it but don’t change your life and morals based on lies.
Shearing is actually essential for sheep, though that is a side effect of how we’ve bred them to produce massive quantities of wool.
This is Shrek, a merino sheep that ran away from Bendigo Station in New Zealand. He hadn’t been shorn in six years when he was found like this, carrying 27 kg (60 lbs) of wool on him. A normal Merino fleece weighs around 4.5 kg. Because of all of this wool, Shrek couldn’t see, could barely move, and he was overheated.
They sheared him on live television:
He had enough wool on him to make 20 suits.
Here’s a freshly shorn Shrek with a lot of weight off his back:
I grew up in a part of the UK where sheep are basically a fact of life (which tbf doesn’t narrow things down much, the UK’s full of them), and you see freshly shorn sheep all the time in summer and it’s just mindboggling that anyone could fall for shitty lies like PETA’s propaganda.
I’m assuming that most people involved with PETA are young, urban, and privileged and don’t have a single clue about farming. Or basic animal needs, for that matter.
These are the same city slickers who fall for that hillbilly “look! I dove in the water and caught a fish with my bare hands” trick
like seriously trust farmers and large animal vets to know how to take care of their animals. factory farms are a particular evil that we absolutely should talk about, but we *have* bred these animals to be 100% entirely dependent on human support. there is a very deep collective knowledge going back literally to the foundations of human civilization on how to take care of your farm animals. it’s kind of how we got to where we are.
FantasyBoudicca 