Benetton is baaad for sheep, claim activists

BLINDFOLDED activists staged an eye-catching protest outside a Benetton clothes store yesterday to highlight what they claim is a ‘gruesome’ abuse of millions of lambs and sheep by the Australian wool industry.

Members of the Animal Rights Action Network (ARAN) were attempting to convince the retail chain not to sell garments made with Australian wool until live exports are banned and other farming methods stopped.

John Carmody, who led the banner-wielding group outside Benetton on Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green, claimed a “gruesome” procedure called mulesing was being used on the lambs.

Mr Carmody said of the practice: “Large chunks of flesh are cut from the backside of sheep to avoid maggot infestation.”

Mulesing, which the Australian government has said it will ban in 2010, is carried out to stop blowfly laying eggs in lambswool, as the flesh-eating maggots which emerge can fatally wound the animals.

Mr Carmody said: “When their wool is no longer profitable, over six million of these sheep are live exported on filthy, crammed, overcrowded, disease-ridden, ships to the Middle East where they will be killed for their flesh.”

ARAN, which has more than 400 members across Ireland, vowed to escalate their protests if Benetton did not stop using the wool. The protest was part of the international campaign against Australian wool led by the 800,000 member People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

A Benetton statement said the boycott was “unjustified and defamatory”, adding that it had been assured that research was being carried out to find alternatives to mulesing.

Green Party TD Eamon Ryan, who passed by the 12 protesters said: “I think that it is a good way of getting corporations to change what is a very cruel situation.”

Protesters waved banners with reading “Benetton is Baaad to Sheep” and handed out leaflets.

Mr Carmody said some stores in America had already stated they would not be buying any more wool from Australia until the practice changes.