Chrissie Hynde is angry at Benetton over that company’s use of wool from merino lambs.
Hynde and other animal rights activist charge that the practice of mulesing, in which skin is removed from around the anus of lambs without the animals receiving any sort of anaesthesia. Activists claim the practice is cruel, farmers say its causes no more pain than castrating or tail docking an animal.
Hynde sent a letter to Benetton which said, in part,
I was deeply upset to learn fro my friends at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) about the extreme suffering of merino lambs and sheep in the Australian wool industry.
It saddens me to learn that Benetton, a company that I have always thought of as holding high standards of human and animal welfare, has refused to stop buying cruelly obtained Australian wool.
Thank goodness Hynde is just sad. When she gets angry enough, it could be murder, as she said in 2002,
The last resort is for someone to go in and actually take these guys out. Maybe it will have to be an out-and-out assassination. When no one will listen anymore, then individuals have to take the law into their own hands and it can get very ugly.
Perhaps not as ugly as Hynde, but you get the idea. Apparently the mulesing situation is not yet assassin-worthy in Hynde’s view (though it would be nice if she would, in the future, give us an indication on each issue as to just how close it is to assassination time).
Source:
Hynde slams Benetton for animal cruelty. ContactMusicNow.Com, March 22, 2005.