Mulesing - removing wool-bearing skin around sheep's hindquarters - causes significant pain but prevents potentially fatal flystrike, and welfare-positive alternatives are advancing.
Mulesing welfare ethics involve a genuine pain-prevention dilemma. The procedure itself causes significant acute pain during and after surgery, especially without analgesia. However, flystrike - where blowflies lay eggs in soiled wool and larvae eat living sheep - causes agonizing suffering and death that mulesing largely prevents. The welfare resolution requires both pain relief for the procedure itself and development of non-surgical alternatives including targeted selective breeding of flystrike-resistant sheep, chemical controls, and alternative husbandry practices. Australia's wool industry has committed to phasing out unrelieved mulesing.