Mulesing - surgically removing folds of skin from lambs' breech without anesthesia - is used to prevent flystrike. Progress in alternative approaches is making this painful procedure increasingly unnecessary.
Mulesing causes acute pain from the procedure itself and chronic pain during wound healing over weeks. Lambs show clear pain behaviors including vocalizations, abnormal posture, and altered gait. The welfare justification has been that flystrike causes even worse suffering - a genuine welfare trade-off that has driven the continuation of the practice. However, the evidence base for alternatives has strengthened. Breeding programs reducing wool wrinkle, pain relief protocols that significantly reduce mulesing welfare cost, and monitoring-based flystrike prevention programs have all advanced. The industry is moving away from mulesing, but progress has been slower than animal welfare advocates and many retailers have sought.