'Blatant lies': Wool worker hits out at 'brainwashed' PETA protesters over lamb stunt
Animal rights activists who carried a fake, dead lamb through Sydney in protest against cruelty in the wool industry are “brainwashed”, a Queensland wool worker says.
Chantel McAlister, originally from Brisbane, has worked in the wool industry for more than a decade after meeting partner Jason, the son of wool growers, and falling in love with the farm work.
She says groups like PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) use misinformation to send out “foot soldiers” to protest in cities and push a commercial agenda.
“I do feel sorry for them,” she told Yahoo News Australia.
“Organisations like PETA know full well what they’re doing, They’re not a charity, they are a business.
“People like PETA are cult leaders and they just force feed mistruths.”
The anger directed at Australian wool sheds and the protest in Sydney last week by two female PETA members are misguided and fuelled by misinformation, she believes.
“Ninety-nine per cent of them have big hearts and they’re very compassionate but from the misinformation they are fed, their anger is misguided. They have their heart in the right place but they are brainwashed”.
Ms McAlister, whose sister is a vegan, didn’t always feel this way, though.
‘I hated all farmers’
When she was younger she remembers walking past a billboard in Brisbane that called for a boycott on mulesing, a practice that involves removing wool-bearing skin around a sheep’s buttocks to prevent parasitic infection.
“That’s it, I thought. I hated all farmers,” she recalled.
But after working her way up from being a handler to a master wool classer on farms throughout Queensland, she says the wool industry doesn’t resemble anything like the message that PETA puts out to the public.
“I can see all different points of view,” she said. But cruelty and serious injuries to sheep are not the norm.
“I have never said animal cruelty doesn’t happen in the wool industry. There are bad eggs everywhere in life. We want them out as much as PETA does.”
Ms McAlister runs a Truth About Wool campaign online and on social media and tries to educate the public and dispel myths about the industry, particularly those promulgated by activist groups.
“As someone who has spent more than a decade in the wool industry it can be frustrating … to have to use our time and resources to hit back at them,” she said.
PETA’s claims about wool growing refuted
Two female protestors in Sydney last week held up signs reading “Sheep suffer — ditch wool” and “Sheep kicked and beaten for wool” as they urged shoppers in Sydney not to buy wool products.
Activists claimed eyewitness investigators found that lambs endured “vicious beatings” and were being deliberately mutilated and left with open wounds.
PETA also claims thousands of years of genetic manipulation had led to sheep producing an unnatural amount of wool.
“That one is my favourite,’ Ms McAlister said. “It does make me laugh.”
“The whole genetically modified sheep, we’ve improved them for the climate, and the market and for easier handling,” she explained.
“So they’ve sort of taken something that the industry is proud of and moving forward with, and jumbled it up a bit.”
PETA also says sheep grow just enough wool to keep them warm in winter and naturally shed during warmer months. Not true, says McAlister, pointing to the famous case of Shrek the sheep who evaded shearing in New Zealand for six years.
“It he fell over, he would have died. It’s overgrown wool and there’s so many things that can go wrong,” she said. “Not shearing them is giving them an early death sentence.”
PETA also claims sheep are bred to have extra wrinkly skin, when in fact the opposite is true, according to McAlister.
“They don’t care that it’s a blatant lie, and they know it’s a blatant lie.”
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