Tennis Star Martina Navratilova Serves Impassioned Plea to Australian Prime Minister: Love All!

When we told tennis star Martina Navratilova, who is playing in the Australian Open, exactly how lambs and sheep are abused “Down Under,” she lobbed an impassioned plea to Prime Minister John Howard, calling on the Australian government to end the painful mulesing mutilation of lambs and the live sheep export trade.

Navratilova is upset about two practices in Australia’s wool industry: the live flaying of lambs and the live export of older sheep. Most sheep in Australia undergo “mulesing,” whereby farmers use gardening shears to cut chunks of flesh from the backsides of lambs without any painkillers. This is a crude and cost-free attempt to reduce maggot infestation, although humane alternatives exist that would require actual sheep monitoring, an expenditure for fly control, and so on, too much to expect, apparently, from the average sheep farmer. The second act of cruelty comes later, when millions of older sheep are shipped on open-deck carriers over thousands of miles, through extreme weather and disease-ridden conditions, to the Middle East, where they are slaughtered while fully conscious. During the journey, sick and injured sheep, treated as cargo, are tossed alive into grinders or thrown overboard to drown or be eaten by sharks. Last week, one ship was caught at sea in extremely rough weather and ran into fuel difficulties.

Click here to read Navratilova’s letter to Prime Minister Howard.

Click here to read the Australian Associated Press coverage of Navratilova’s letter.

You can join Martina Navratilova and countless others in speaking out against this abuse by writing to Australian Prime Minister John Howard and urging him to end mulesing and live exports immediately:

The Honourable John Howard
Prime Minister of Australia
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
www.pm.gov.au/email.cfm (e-mail)