Mulesing - removing skin from the breech area of Merino sheep to prevent flystrike - causes acute pain. Alternatives are becoming commercially viable as welfare pressure increases.
Mulesing causes acute and significant pain. The procedure involves cutting through skin and underlying tissue without anesthesia in lambs typically 2-12 weeks old. Research shows elevated pain indicators lasting hours to days after the procedure. The procedure is painful by design - scar tissue formation is the intended outcome. While flystrike itself causes severe welfare harm (maggots consuming living tissue), both the disease and the preventive procedure cause suffering, making the ethical calculus genuinely complex. The availability of alternatives - particularly selective breeding for bare-breech phenotypes - demonstrates that the industry can move away from mulesing without accepting flystrike risk.