It’s called ‘sheep freeze branding’ and it’s supposed to be a better, less painful alternative to mulesing, the barbaric act of cutting away the skin on a sheep’s backside with shears to prevent flystrike, always without anaesthesia and in many cases without pain relief. Why are we faced with having to choose between mulesing and freeze branding at all?

Mulesing is one the most uncomfortable aspects of wool production for farmers in Australia, not because most of them don’t agree with it, but that it doesn’t sit well at all with the public from an animal welfare perspective. Animal rights activists quite rightfully draw attention to this disturbing practise, in which the skin from a sheep’s breech - the area just under the tail - is ‘modified’, to use the industry’s own euphemism.

This modification is quite simply the skin being cut away with sheers to leave a bloody, open wound. The scar that is left when the skin heals does not grow wool, which normally would accumulate faeces and risk attracting parasitic flies. When the eggs they lay in the wool hatch, it is called ‘flystrike’ and it can lead to an agonising and prolonged death for sheep.

While it may seem like a necessary procedure, half the time it is done without any pain relief at all and the open wound that is left can take a long, painful time to heal. In 2014, it was found that only 58 per cent of lambs in Australia had received pain medication following mulesing - that is more than nine million lambs who had to endure painful open wounds for days after with no pain relief. Furthermore, flystrike can still happen elsewhere on a sheep’s body but is less likely due to the absence of faeces. There are also chemical alternatives to mulesing, preventing flystrike for up to six months at a cost of $1 per sheep per application, while pain relief is reported to cost $2 per sheep, both expenses seen by many farmers as too great.

Now we find ourselves in a situation where freezing sheep with liquid nitrogen is somehow perfectly acceptable. Through what is called ‘sheep freeze branding’, the same area of skin is branded very much in the same sense as hot iron branding, killing off the wool follicles to reduce the risk of flystrike. The process - developed by Australian vet Dr John Steinfort, CEO of Steinfort AgVet Pty. Ltd, and tested by the University of Melbourne - leaves no open wound and was until recently thought to be relatively painless.

However, based on preliminary findings, researchers at the University of Melbourne stated that “freeze branding (with meloxicam pain relief) appears to be more painful than tail docking and castration alone, and similar to mulesing (with meloxicam), on the day of application.”

Wool from freeze-branded has already found its way into the supply chain, being sold alongside “high welfare” non-mulesed wool. According to one comment left by an apparent wool farmer on a report by Sheep Central furious with the actions of the Australian Wool Exchange (AWEX), a non-government body that ‘self-regulates’ the industry:

Dr Steinfort, I have absolutely no problem with growers using your apparatus to remove skin wrinkle from the breech of their sheep. But I really object that AWEX has allowed breech-modified wool to be boxed with non-mulesed wool. This is extremely unfair and just kills all the hard work I have done breeding the right sheep to supply the market with what they desire — non-mulesed wool — then to have the freeze branders piggyback into my space without the breeding effort. It stinks.

Apparently, the labelling of freeze-branded wool has ignited quite the furor in the Australian wool industry, with calls for it to be allowed to be included on the National Wool Declaration (NWD), an “animal welfare statement that allows farmers to report if they have used mulesing shears to remove the breech of the sheep” according to ABC News. Proponents of freeze-branding want it to be seen as non-mulesing, while others say it doesn’t fit in either category and that the science is still out on whether it does indeed lead to greater animal welfare, whatever that means.

Australia’s economy has been dependent on merino wool dating back to the late 1700s, and now exporting it around the world:

Australia is one of the world’s largest wool producers, producing around 25 per cent of greasy wool sold on the world market. The value of Australian wool exports in 2016-17 is estimated to be around $3.615 billion; this reflects the continuing strong global demand for Australia’s wool, which is regarded as among the world’s best.

Just today, Australian Wool Innovation (AWI), a major research and marketing body had to - under questioning by the Australian Senate - backtrack on a report that listed North Korea as a top emerging market despite sanctions that prohibit all trade to the rogue state except medicine and food. A bit of a misjudgement, perhaps, but an indication that Australia is eying up new markets for one of its most important commodities. All these are signs that wool is inextricably linked with Australia, leading us to so-called innovations like freeze-branding that sound like some kind of science-fiction torture method.

Like all moves to improve animal welfare, with all the best intentions in the world to cause less pain and suffering in industries that welfarists argue are part of our modern world and would happen however much we talk about the rights of animals, freeze branding is at best the lesser of two evils. Even if it does cause less pain and no open wounds to heal, freeze branding is just guilt appeasement when we simply shouldn’t be breeding animals to exploit them in the first place.

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager at Surge.

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