• Ganbat@lemmyonline.com
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    5 months ago

    Let me ask you this: where do you stand on shearing sheep?

    EDIT: Since the user chose to ignore my question, I’ll just explain my reasoning. Many vegans consider the shearing of sheep and using of wool to be cruel, with some having ‘rape’ and ‘molestation’ narratives like those being addressed in this meme and active in this thread. Despite this, modern sheep require sheering for their health, and will become matted, heavy and overheated otherwise.

    • SqueakyBeaver
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      2 months ago

      Huh, I wonder if sheep used to grow less wool and humans just bred them for a lot of wool. Time to go research!

      Edit: that is exactly what happened. Wild sheep do not grow a lot of wool.

      • Ganbat@lemmyonline.com
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        5 months ago

        Yes, they did. Either way, however, not shearing domestic sheep is harmful to them, and I’ve personally seen the molestation “argument” appear in response to such a statement in the past.

        Someone who’s more informed might respond with something about the selective breeding. Plenty will still respond with the same energy already seen within this thread.

    • Nachorella@lemmy.sdf.org
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      5 months ago

      I didn’t choose to ignore anything. I just have a life outside of being an annoying vegan.

      You already knew what I was going to say, though. I’m personally against wool products because they breed sheep specifically to grow unhealthy amounts of wool and once the few good coats they have in them are gone they send them off to be killed for food anyway.

      Sheep can also be mistreated during the shearing process, and since shearers are often paid per sheep they’re incentivised to rush through them.

      I’m not going to use the word rape here since I don’t think it applies.

      Have I activated any trap cards?

    • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      There’s nothing wrong with shearing sheep if there’s no exploitation occurring. The problem is when you add a profit motive to keep breeding animals designed with their exploitation in mind.

      However, I’m going to go out on limb here, and say there probably aren’t many sheep in the care of vegans except on animal sanctuaries. The important thing is to stop buying wool and funding animal exploitation.

    • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      I think one should only be allowed to shear sheep if they’re either not breeding their sheep, or breeding them to produce more manageable coats like in the wild. Ideally our sheep population would be much lower and the animals would naturally be healthy. So people should only be allowed to extract labour value from their sheep if they’re working to reduce exploitation.