Mulesing-free wool
Mulesing-free wool is now also available from Australia. However, the percentage of supply is still very low, estimated by a wool supplier for certified Australian wool at approx. 1%, with an upward trend.
With the exception of Australia, mulesing is not performed, according to our wool suppliers.
This means that wool (with the exception of Australia) is generally mulesing-free.
Why mulesing-free wool?
Various animal welfare organizations, such as PETA, criticize and document sheep shearing in Australia. There, at the first shearing, skin folds in the rear fleece area of the sheep are removed to prevent the nesting and spreading of fly larvae in the animals' flesh. Australian shepherds argue that the sheep would perish if infested. The highly bred Merino sheep with many skin folds are affected. In principle, we believe that sheep should not suffer unnecessarily and therefore use only mulesing-free wool types in our production.
Therefore, we have looked more closely into the problem of mulesing in connection with wool production and decided to purchase only mulesing-free wool for the production of our wool blankets from 2020 onwards.
After intensive searching, we found isolated wool provenances in South America and South Africa that meet our standards also with regard to our quality requirements. (Crimp, style, color, length, fineness). We also found certified Australian wool that is mulesing-free.
In this context, the company Ritter Decken will also process long-forgotten and neglected coarser wool types from Germany into wool blankets, which are not only mulesing-free, but also have a positive effect on people and the environment here.
