Organic wool

[Carol in Canberra]

I can't tell for sure but you all sound like northern hemisphere sheep 
raisers who can look at your flock almost daily. I come from where the 
majority of the world's wool is grown, Australia. Here flocks run to the 
thousands and no person can examine every sheep for signs of illness. 
While there are organic woolgrowers here raising organic wool (being the 
largest source of the organic wool sold in the US), most are after the 
greatest return on investment and sell their wool in huge bales to 
overseas buyers. 95% of the sheep are merinos and most goes to Italy and 
Japan. They routinely drench for worms and liver fluke because rotating 
paddocks (fields) isn't really an option especially in drought 
conditions. Yes, they dock their tails (sorry PETA) because otherwise 
the sheep would die from the inside out by flies laying eggs in the 
fecal matter around the tail and hatching into flesh-eating maggots (not 
a pleasant idea, is it?). I raise organic veggies and fruit but as a 
nation we have the problem of too many cleared acres to raise sheep on, 
and we now are suffering soil erosion, dry land salinity, and loss of 
habitat for our native birds and animals. In the situations you 
describe, raising organic sheep is possible and I hope profitable but we 
are concerned with the national economy. Those fine merino wools you buy 
from Italy were not from Italian sheep. I've been thru this argument on 
various spinners list and if the world depended on the wool grown 
organically by northern hemisphere shepherds we'd be very cold. Think 
about that again especially when you look at wool that comes from China 
where I'll bet there is precious little done for the welfare of the 
sheep nor for what happens to the wool as a result.

Carol
swanknitter.blogspot.com
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