http://youcansavealamb.blogspot.com/

This issue is a very complex one and one that is not solved by boycotts.
Despite being describes as less than sensitive there are some other point you and other consumers need to consider.
The web site is a little rusty as it is the first time I have done one and only started this morning.

One of the things that is interesting is when you take a suit from Zegna or Ralph Lauren or other top designers, or some of the best knitwear.

A suit might cost a customer $1500 for a magnificent Aust Merino fibre suit, better than anything else in the world.

Yet the farmer will be lucky to get $15 for the amount of wool that will go into the suit.

So it is one thing to criticise farmers for doing what they think is best for the welfare of their animals to prevent them being eaten alive by maggots, but the consumer needs to know they have to be part of the a process that makes sure farmers are rewarded for their work, care and environmental stewardship in trying to clothe and feed the world.

It is a very complex debate.

The income of people doing it tough on the farm is at risk by people trying to say the wrong story. As I mentioned in the web page, no one likes having to mules their sheep.

Australian farmers on average work over 70hrs a week, which includes some of the most backbreaking hard work imaginable.

They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars feeding livestock they have spent many years breeding, to keep them alive in drought.

They receive little income after their ever spiralling costs are taken to account.

They then are pilloried by media and animal rights groups from around the world who are hell bent on taking away their customers so they will be financially and emotionally destroyed.

Once the farmers are gone, who will look after the most exciting source for sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, the soil?

Once the farmers are gone, who will look after the animals left to go wild and feral?

Once the farmers are gone, who will provide the food for the third world countries who cannot feed themselves?

It won’t be the animal rights extremists.

So when someone buys a $1500 suit and remembers that the farmer on the other side of the world is getting $15 for his contribution, it doesn’t seem much to think they might Save a Lamb by spending $50 so they will be able to buy another suit next year….and a farmer might still be alive and in business.

With the drought in Australia that has been so devastating over the past 7 years, there is one farmer killing themselves every three days.

They cannot cope with the stress that is being placed on them financially and emotionally. They aren’t coping with the lack of support and certainty they are able to provide their families.

They can not cope with the stress their relationships are under because of the amount of money and energy they spend looking after their animals to keep them alive and in many cases cant deal with the emotional and financial needs of their family.

One Australian Farmer commits suicide every three days!

Rates of severe clinical depression are highest in Australian farmers than any other group in Australia.

Australian farmers have to deal with this and worry how they are going to keep going and keep their families together.

And at the same time they are attacked from people from all over the world who like to go to work looking smart in their suits, who would have no idea that it was made from merino wool, have never been to a sheep farm and probably don’t know where milk, bread or steak come from, but will make a judgement about what a specialist, caring environmentalist wool grower is doing on the other side of the world.

I am really sorry to download on you about this.

I have had too many friends suffer from depression, too many stories of suicide, too many stories of people being evicted from their farms by banks because the global supply chain rapes them, then makes them out to be the perpetrators of a crime.

This is a very complex issue and a boycott will not solve it.

How do we so easily overlook the suffering of people in an attempt to make ourselves feel good by thinking we are doing something for animals.

But really, just being aware of these practices and knowing the situation is already a huge step.