If you’re new to the issue, live lamb cutting is a brutal, painful procedure that involves restraining lambs as young as two weeks old, flipping them upside down, strapping them into a metal cradle and cutting away large folds of skin around their hindquarters to reduce the risk of flystrike. These poor lambs are just weeks old, defenceless and terrified. The pain they experience is both immediate and long lasting.

While flystrike – when blowflies lay eggs in the skin folds of sheep – is a serious welfare issue, live lamb cutting is the wrong solution. It’s a crude attempt to fix a problem that we created by deliberately breeding sheep to have extra skin (and therefore skin folds) in the first place in an effort to get even more wool off sheep.

But here’s the thing: cutting away the skin around the hindquarters doesn’t even solve the problem entirely. These poor lambs can still suffer from flystrike on other parts of their bodies where their extra skin still folds. And what’s even more shocking, the wool industry has known about the links between breeding wrinkly sheep and flystrike for over 100 years.¹

This is not a small problem.

‘It is estimated that more than 10 million lambs experience the pain and trauma of live lamb cutting every year’ – that's roughly 19 lambs every minute.²

Imagine taking your dog to the vet for a regular check-up and being told they need to have skin removed from their hindquarters, bigger than your palm. The vet applies a topical cream after the cuts to provide brief pain relief. Yet, your dog will suffer the effects for days, if not weeks.

Now imagine that the person performing this 'surgical procedure' isn’t even a vet.

All this would be illegal to do to a dog.

As for the so-called pain relief, it doesn’t cut it.

Only two states in Australia have mandated pain relief – Victoria and Tasmania. This does not include the mandated use of adequate pain relief and wound care. The lambs feel every cut and only after the mutilation a topical cream providing brief pain relief is applied. You can read more about live lamb cutting and the use of pain relief here.

The only real solution? Breeding plain-bodied sheep who are naturally resistant to flystrike. Essentially, this means no longer deliberately breeding sheep to have excess skin and skin folds which attract flies (and also causing them other major welfare issues) but instead join the thousands of wool producers who are breeding sheep with no need to be live lamb cut instead.

Nearly half of Australian wool producers have recognised that live lamb cutting is brutal and that the global wool market doesn’t support it – many have done so by transitioning to breeding flystrike-resistant sheep. These producers are not only improving animal welfare but also reaping the benefits – healthier sheep, lower costs, and higher prices for their wool.

What’s more, they did this transition on their own, without support from the Australian wool industry who continue to cast doubt on the use of good genetics as the answer.

This is not a new solution, the wool industry has known about it for decades, and it has been successfully implemented by thousands of wool producers since the 1990s.

The wool industry has catastrophically failed to lead a national phase-out of live lamb cutting. Instead of supporting producers in transitioning, they’ve spent millions on alternative solutions like vaccines and chemical treatments – none of which address the root cause. Between 2018 and 2023, Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) wasted millions trying to develop a flystrike vaccine.

But why? It turns out, the people influencing the decisions were often the same ones who benefitted from continuing the practice. This may be explained by the extent to which these peak bodies are led by producers that still practice live lamb cutting themselves, or who operate studs that sell sheep with a high wrinkle score and are therefore at risk of flystrike (see report page 39-43).

Talk about a conflict of interest.

It’s not just the lambs who’ve been betrayed. Wool producers, the Australian public, consumers, animal welfare organisations, and global brands all expected the industry to follow through on the promise they made in 2004.

Instead, we’ve been fed 20 years of empty words and excuses.

Over 330 global brands have publicly opposed live lamb cutting, and 90 have signed the open letter prepared by FOUR PAWS, calling on the Australian wool industry to end the practice by 2030.

Nike, adidas, H&M, Zara, Target, Patagonia, Hugo Boss, Kmart and The North Face have all committed to only source certified wool free from live lamb cutting.

It's not just brands voicing their displeasure. A YouGov opinion poll conducted in April 2024, showed that nearly four in five people agree that retailers should stop sourcing wool from sheep subjected to live lamb cutting once learning about the procedure.³