LOS ANGELES - The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has vowed to launch a new global public relations and economic campaign against Australian wool growers after a peace deal it offered was rejected.
PETA proposed a three-point peace plan on May 1 to end its four-year global anti-mulesing campaign that led almost 20 international clothing retailers - including Hugo Boss, Perry Ellis, Abercrombie and Fitch, Timberland, H&M and Victoria's Secret - to ban the use of Australian wool from mulesed sheep.
Mulesing involves cutting skin from the hindquarters of sheep to prevent flystrike, a painful and often fatal condition caused by fly larvae feeding on the tissue, but PETA claims the preventive medicine is in itself cruel.
The Australian wool industry's research and development body, Australian Wool Innovation (AWI), dismissed the peace deal in a letter it sent to PETA's Virginia headquarters on Friday.
"We will not compromise our ongoing progress and the risk of an increased number of sheep being exposed to the pain and suffering associated with flystrike," the letter, signed by new AWI chairman Brian van Rooyen and eight board members, stated.
The letter drew a stern response from PETA.
"As you can imagine, we at PETA were disappointed by your May 23 response to our 'peace offer' letter," PETA's director of corporate affairs, Matt Prescott, wrote in a letter sent to AWI today.
" ... accordingly, our work with retailers worldwide urging them to withdraw their support from mulesing mutilations will continue full speed ahead until such a change does take place."
In rejecting PETA's three-point plan, the AWI board wrote it will "continue to vigorously research alternatives to surgical mulesing" and maintain a commitment to phase out surgical mulesing by December 31, 2010.
AWI also stated it fully endorses the use of pain relief for sheep in the interim.
PETA was particularly disappointed AWI appears to be pushing ahead with clip mulesing, an alternative to surgical mulesing.
PETA also deems clip mulesing as cruel and wrote "retailers such as Perry Ellis, Hugo Boss, H&M, IC Companys, Matalan, and others have publicly stated that they do not - and will not - support it".
Under PETA's three-point peace deal, Australian farmers would need to immediately end the use of clip mulesing and replace it with flystrike control methods that "don't involve the removal of skin or flesh".
Australian farmers also would have to ensure that after 2010 they would not remove "flesh and skin" from sheep's rumps "by standard or clip mulesing or any other procedure aimed at managing flystrike".
Thirdly, farmers would immediately undertake bare-breech programs nationwide "with the goal that every wool-producing sheep in Australia will be bare-breech by the end of 2013".
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