Retailers Against Wool

Six US clothing and retail firms, including Liz Claiborne Inc, Macy’s, and Gap, have written a letter to Australian Wool Innovation (AWI), which represents Australian wool producers, expressing their anger over the organization’s continuation of mulesing. Mulesing is a practice in which part of a sheep’s hindquarter skin is removed (often without anesthesia) to prevent a potentially fatal disease called flystrike, which involves parasitic maggots eating the animals’ flesh. The US companies expressed their “great disappointment” in response to the AWI’s decision to not take part in a promise to American manufacturers that the inhumane practice would end by 2013.