Mulesing — the surgical removal of skin around a sheep's breech to prevent flystrike — is one of the most controversial practices in wool production, and alternatives are available and increasingly adopted.
Mulesing causes acute pain in lambs and has been a major focus of animal welfare campaigning and retailer policy in the wool industry. While it is effective at reducing flystrike — a condition where blowfly larvae infest moist skin folds and cause serious suffering — the prevention causes significant pain itself. The welfare calculus is therefore complex: untreated flystrike causes severe suffering, but mulesing inflicts acute pain on every lamb in the flock to prevent it in some. Alternatives including improved selective breeding, more frequent inspection, targeted treatments, and management changes have been demonstrated to work effectively without mulesing, and the trend in progressive wool production is clearly toward mulesing-free systems supported by pain-managed transition periods.