Recognising and Owning

For dog worrying of sheep to be made to cease, the happening needs to be utterly recognised, to be addressed, and where responsibility for it lies to be owned. 

A 2024 police survey by the National Sheep Association (NSA) found that ‘78% of forces who took part reported an increase in sheep worrying by dog incidents’. It also found that ‘Dogs off lead and not under control was the main cause of attacks, followed by lack of responsibility, education and disrespect for livestock/farming’ (Sheep Worrying, Survey Results, National Sheep Association).  

Governments need to give sufficient attention to the matter of dog worrying of sheep and bring in legislation to address the matter. Dog owners need to own that their dogs have a natural inclination to worry sheep, and own, and accept, their responsibility to see that their dogs do not worry sheep. Of course, there is too the onus on sheep owners and carers to see that the sheep for which are responsible are in an as-secure-from-threat-of-dogs situation as possible. Sheep outdoors on land will at least have some room to run from dogs. Sheep indoors will be trapped. A dreadful example of the latter was in 2023 where, of sheep in a farmer’s barn, 22 pregnant sheep were killed and 48 injured from attacks by two XL bully dogs (Andy Wells, ‘Farmer forced to shoot dead two XL bully dogs after they kill 22 sheep’, yahoo! news, 16th May 2024).

At a conference in the UK in 2023 ‘Dog owners received a stern warning from the Farming Minister Mark Spencer to keep their canines on a lead when near livestock after a sharp rise in attacks’. He ‘blamed the owners themselves, rather than the dogs, for making “bad choices” after an increase in the number of sheep worrying incidents and attacks on cattle over the past few months.’ And he said ‘There is no such thing as a bad dog. It is just bad owners.’ (Chris Brayford, ‘Farming Minister calls on dog owners to keep dogs on a lead’, Farmers Guardian, 16th June 2023). 

Mark Spencer was Farming Minister in the Conservative Government. That Government supported a Private Members’ Presentation Bill ‘which would give police greater powers to crack down on irresponsible dog owners whose pets attack livestock’ introduced early in 2024 by Dr Thérèse Coffey. This was the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) (Amendment) Bill. Its aim was ‘to amend the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act 1953’ (‘Government backs proposals to tackle livestock worrying’, NFUonline, 17th May 2024). On 24th April 2024 the Bill was unamended (Commons Library Research Briefing, 15th May 2024). In a General Election on 4th July 2024 a Labour Government was elected. 

It is clear that dog worrying of sheep is continuing and increasing. Dog worrying occurs because dog owners are not - for whatever reason - stopping their dogs from worrying sheep. Whether from choice or through ignorance, dog owners are opting not to accept and display responsibility for their dogs, not to control their dogs, when the dogs are indicating their natural inclination to see sheep as prey. The NSA survey, quoted above, conveys the message(s). To impose firmly recognition in dog owners that they must own responsibility for their dogs and for controlling them against worrying sheep, adequate legislation and much education are needed. And demanded to be generated in dog owners are respect for, and care about, sheep.

Enforcement

There are laws and regulations to achieve good welfare and treatment of animals. But if they are not enforced, at all or entirely, animals will not have the protection and good experience that the laws and regulations are aimed to bring. 

The Animal Law Foundation and Animal Equality delivered in October 2022 the Report The Enforcement Problem: The Case for Stronger Enforcement of Farmed Animal Protection Laws in the United Kingdom. In the Foreword Edie Bowles, Executive Director of The Animal Law Foundation depicted “The Enforcement Problem” as ‘…when a law exists on paper, but is grossly underenforced in practice, rendering its value questionable at best and redundant at worst.’ She went on to remark, ‘The Enforcement Problem for farmed animals has been known by those working in the field for some time’. Abigail Penny, Executive Director of Animal Equality UK, described in the Foreward that ‘UK policy makers have taken steps to ban a number of particularly cruel practices’ and that ‘it would only be too fair for consumers to assume that our [UK] agricultural standards surpass that of other countries’, and said ‘But the true test comes when we determine how the legislation is applied.’

In showing who are responsible in the UK for enforcement ‘On Farm’, ‘At Slaughterhouses’, ‘During Transport’, ‘At Market’, the Report displayed that in the UK there is a great complexity of responsibility for enforcement. In the Report’s Conclusion it is stated ‘There are nearly 300,000 farms in the UK, but between 2018-2021 an average of only 2.95% were inspected by public bodies.’

In February 2023 came the Report Law and Disorder: The Enforcement Solution from Animal Equality UK which ‘looks towards action on how to solve The Enforcement Problem.’ In its Introduction is said ‘there is an abundance of evidence, gathered and presented in Animal Equality’s initial joint report with The Animal Law Foundation, demonstrating that non-compliance is rife and that there is a troubling lack of oversight of the animal agriculture industries.’ The essential solution the Report recommends is a system of licensing of farms for welfare purposes, and with the key elements being farm record keeping and official inspections. 

In the Conclusion it is said 

‘It’s clear we need more order by way of stronger enforcement, if we are to make sure the UK’s animal protection laws are fulfilling their purpose of protecting animals.

As a first step, Animal Equality recommends that a licensing system be made a legal requirement across all UK farms within the next three years. This will address several of the issues that are currently leading to poor enforcement, and more suffering for farmed animals.’

In a speech at the Animal and Vegan Advocacy Summit in May 2024 Abigail Penny is reported to have said ‘that “enacting laws is just the beginning” and that without proper oversight the true impact of new laws will not be felt by animals on the ground.’  (Imogen Allen, ‘Animal Equity Shines at AVA Summit in Washington, D.C.’, 12th June 2024, updated 19th June 2024). 

Not merely do existing laws and regulations need to be enforced. New ones need to be formulated, and then enforced, that display acceptance of a key thing, that farm animals - sheep therefore - are sentient. 

Moreover, further advances in human outlook can be envisaged, with the law reflecting them, and it being enforced. It is to be hoped that requiring to be manifested in laws and regulations in the very near future, will be a change of human attitude, of seeing farm animals as not for use but for treasuring for themselves. Interestingly, Dr Steven McCulloch, Professor Paul Chaney and Dr Lisa Riley in their 2024 report Political Animals: The Democratic and Electoral Case for Strong Animal Welfare Policies in UK General Elections, which considers a Focaldata 2023 poll of the British public (6,050 respondents) that was commissioned by Humane Society International UK and some other animal protection organisations, say this; ‘This report has found a consistent supermajority level of British public support for progressive animal protection policies, defined as 67% or over of the population. At the same time, this level of support is not reflected in government laws and policy.’ 

The general implication therefore is that - as well as current animal protection law needing to be enforced – there is a need for animal protection law to ‘catch up’ with public opinion. Anthropologist Roanne Van Voorst says this: ‘The law is humanity’s alternative Bible, the one that doesn’t celebrate our belief in a supra-human god as a source of all goodness, but rather our belief in humanity as that source.’ (Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals: The Future of Food, 2021, p 181).  

With coming change of human thought on farm animals will be demanded new laws and regulations, and enforcement of them.

Rights

What distinguishes animal rights from animal welfare? In essence, animal welfare looks to see that animals are treated as well as possible in the context of their being creatures owned by humans and deployed for humans’ purpose. Animal welfare has been a concern for a long while - for two centuries. A cornerstone in relation to livestock welfare are the Five Freedoms (which emanated from the 1965 Brambell Report). The perspective of animal rights is that animals should not be subject to what humans want from them, but should have rights to certain things and with which humans must comply.

It can be argued that animal welfare initiatives cannot go far enough because conditioning the initiatives is that due to what humans want from their animals - to deploy the animals for human purposes - the outcome will never be of the well-being of an animal having full sway and being put first. So, a right, and likely with legal enforcement, is required for what is best for animals to prevail and be the totally governing principle.

Non-human animals, sheep therefore, should have the right of good treatment by human animals. The rights that non-human animals should have are: to live life as they wish and as suits their kind; to express their normal behaviour (as one of the Five Freedoms articulates); to have their sentience both fully-recognised and manifested in the calibre of treatment of the animal; to have a full span of life. 

In the difference between animal welfare and animal rights resides where lies power- with either the human or the creature. What animal welfare constitutes and how far it goes towards seeing that an animal is treated well is likely to be governed by: the extent to which the human is demanded to tend to the animal’s welfare; the amount of attention to animal welfare the human needs to give for their objective. Gary L Francione speaks of the ownership dimension, saying ‘If animals are property, welfare standards will always be low and will be shaped more or less by what level of protection is necessary to exploit animals in an economically efficient way. Animal welfare is about economics, not morality.’ (Why Veganism Matters: The Moral Value of Animals, 2020, p 46). In the Glossary of the book Animal Rights Law (2023) by Raffael N Fasel and Sean B Butler, Welfarism (or Classic Welfarism) is defined as ‘an approach according to which animals should be treated humanely because they can suffer (ie they have welfare), but they may nevertheless be owned, used, and killed because human interests are considered to be morally weightier than non-human interests. Classic Welfarism is the philosophy underlying animal protection laws around the world.’ (p 202).     

Now to look at what is already happening and to the future. There is reason to hope that animals will attain rights.

The Party for Animals in The Netherlands describes itself as ‘an integral part of a worldwide growing movement of people working for the rights of animals, in politics, in public administration, and in society.’

Roanne Van Voorst calls for law changes. She says that we need ‘… to look at ourselves in a different way; to look at what a human is, and what a nonhuman animal is, and what animal rights could look like as a result, and how these differ from human rights, and the meaning of all these laws in relation to one another in an age in which humans have long since stopped behaving humanely.’ (Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals: The Future of Food, 2021, p 213). And Martha C Nussbaum states ‘If animals have rights, this means that legal mechanisms to enforce them must either exist or be created.’ (Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility, 2022, p 279). She remarks ‘… we must not forget that a justice that is truly global is a justice that takes up the burden of protecting the rights of all sentient creatures …. And it must really by justice - concerned ... with removing barriers to sentient creatures who strive to attain their ends.’ (p 314).

Gary L Francione states ‘When we recognize that animals have a right not to be used as property, we reject treating them exclusively as means to ends.’ (Why Veganism Matters: The Moral Value of Animals (2020) p 150). 

For sheep to attain rights, society needs to change how it sees sheep. 

Sheep should have a right to be treated well; humans have no right to treat sheep as humans choose.

Welfare

Attention to the welfare of sheep varies across the world. Moreover, human interpretation is somewhat fluid and amorphous on what constitutes animal welfare - and therefore what constitutes good animal welfare. Overall, the concept of animal welfare seems to have the embedded interpretation that the item is how people treat animals during process of making use of them. And the use of animals emanates from people having ownership of them. 

Confining seeing animal welfare to be being the matter of how well humans treat animals in the process of using animals, and whom are their possessions, limits standards of animal welfare from being raised to a higher level. It also stops animal welfare from being interpreted fundamentally differently.  

The core alteration to what is meant by animal welfare would come if humans no longer regarded non-human animals as their inferiors. People would stop being speciesist. So, in the instance of sheep, humans - and not just sheep farmers and those in the wider sheep farming community, but everyone - would then attend to sheep’s welfare as well and equivalently as their own.

A nation which sees itself as a leader in animal welfare is the UK. Giving indication of what sheep welfare currently consists in the UK are the RSPCA welfare standards Sheep and the Code of Recommendations for the Welfare of Livestock: Sheep from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), each dated August 2023. 

Sheep need to be seen fully and accurately, and sheep welfare needs much improvement as a consequence. 

In their sheep welfare attitudes, humans need to display an understanding that sheep are sentient.

Necessary, But With Risks

With warming weather will come ‘shearing time’. For their welfare, adult sheep need to be shorn annually. Additionally, some of the sheep will be being shorn for their fleece to be a product, wool. However, shearing, in itself and in its timing and context, has risks to a sheep’s well-being. 

Shearing of a sheep, from a sheep owner’s perspective, can represent a necessity that is rather a nuisance. It needs to be done on welfare grounds but shearing being done may represent an economic drain - because fleece can be worth less than a shearing cost.

Reasons why shearing needs to be done on welfare grounds include: to give sheep comfortability in hot weather; to try to avoid disease due to insect infestation of fleece. Risks to sheep of shearing include: shearing occurring when weather is too cold, and so the sheep is left not warm enough; sheep that are freshly shorn being exposed to too hot weather or circumstance; a shearer’s lack of adequate training and experience; bad handling of sheep during the whole entirety of the sheep shearing process; cutting or nicking a sheep’s skin; shearing with unclean equipment; shearing a sheep over-fast and so carelessness resulting (usually a shearer will be paid by the number of sheep that they have shorn). 

Sight of the ewe with overgrown fleece, from being stranded for two years on the coast of Scotland, reminds how necessary shearing is on welfare grounds - the ewe was shorn after being rescued (Daily Mail, 6th November 2023). But not to be forgotten is that shearing has risks to sheep.

Sheep and City Farms

City farms have usually been set up with worthy objectives. They will be looking to serve their local community, to give information and education about food and farming, to involve people, to help them, to give quality and improvement to their lives. They aim to be accessible. 

Admission to a city farm will likely be free, with any charges being for extras of some kind. Support may come from a local authority - and therefore the public sector. Probably there will be grants from trusts and foundations, and some funding from companies and other donors. A city farm may have been established in less financially straightened times than nowadays, and may be particularly struggling economically at present. 

An essential likelihood is that a city farm will be not adequately resourced, financially, but also in terms of land, staff, and expertise. In a city context, enough quantity and suitable quality of land for a city farm will probably be unable to be obtained. A staff of sufficient number, and representing all necessary knowledge areas, will maybe not be able to be provided because of insufficient funding. Part of the work may be done by volunteers. Potentially, a city farm will be trying to do too much, and will be spreading itself too thinly.

The huge danger, if it is in a context of under-resourcing, is if a city farm has animals. While if it has no animals, an under-resourced city farm can delay a task, or shut down an element until ‘better times’; if it has animals - live creatures - it needs always to be giving them the right amount, type, and calibre of resource, care, and attention. The animals’ welfare is paramount.

Sheep are among those animal types which are often placed at city farms. City farms, in their context of vying for space in areas where, generally, land is at a premium, and at a premium price, are liable to end up occupying space not truly large enough for their requirements and which is not of best quality. Animals at city farms may be placed on land which is too small for them and not right and suitable in other respects. Sheep are creatures of the countryside. They need pasture to stand on and to eat, and enough of it. They are nervous animals. They are not used to being in close proximity to a lot of people. It will be stressful to them if dogs, their predators, are nearby. They need to be cared for by people who are knowledgeable about sheep, their ways, their needs, the diseases and ailments that they can suffer.

To put sheep - any animals - on a city farm is unlikely to serve those creatures’ best interests. Should it be decided to keep sheep there, then the city farm is obliged to ensure that the welfare and well-being of the live creatures is totally attended to - to the highest standard. 

Not A Joke

Sheep are not a joke. They are sentient, intelligent, animals. To portray sheep as comic figures is a frequent occurrence, and liable to encourage the misguided perception in humans that sheep do not need to be taken seriously. Particularly, products aimed for children often show sheep as ‘funny creatures’: this could lead to engendering in the children an attitude for life that sheep are not for valuing.

And with an attitude taken hold among the populace, or regarded as acceptable in society, that all sheep are is ‘a laugh’ could be rendered a dire consequence. This would be of sheep being treated badly because of them not being seen as animals worthy or necessary to be cared for well. Could it be that contributing to the highest level of sheep welfare not always being attained is people regarding sheep as a joke? 

Lamb, Eaten

A lot of lambs are slaughtered because a lot of people want to eat lamb. Lambs for eating are killed early in life, and so they do not experience a full life.

Humans’ eating of lamb, as well as occurring for ‘ordinary reasons’, also happens from being a custom in some religions. An association exists between festivity and eating lamb.

It is not only humans who eat lamb. We know that the dog is a predator of sheep, that dogs out of control can cause sheep stress, harm or even death. But there is another dimension in relation to dogs and sheep. This is that among food which providers offer for dogs is lamb - delivered in various configurations.

Lambs to be eaten do not have much of life, or much of a life. They are being deprived of a large portion of life because of humans’ and dogs’ desire to eat them.

In relation to lambs, Eastertide is a time of contrast and somewhat grim irony. Traditionally, lamb is eaten then. Out in fields, meanwhile, are many lambs, enjoying their young lives (and having feeding and care from their mothers whom they are with).

Can it possibly be right that lots of lambs should lose life, and so soon in the life cycle, for purpose to be food?

Lambs’ Lives

A stereotypical image of lambs is of them gambolling happily in a field, with their mothers close by, looking after them and seeing that they are fed. This is lambs’ existence. But, for some the experience is short, or very short. This is because in the endeavour of sheep farming, ovines are seen as for use. 

If mothers are to give their milk for dairy, their lambs can be quickly removed from them, and thus the lambs will be without their mother’s presence and care and will be fed from a bottle not their mother’s teat. To be meat which is termed ‘lamb’ a lamb will require to be slaughtered young (at some time between age of 10 weeks and 12 months - but most usually when around 6 months old). Lambskin - lamb leather - can arrive from being a lamb meat industry by-product or from slaughter of a lamb directly to be lambskin. The process of ‘getting to be meat’ can have two elements. A lamb is got to a stage but is not yet of best condition and weight to be ready to be meat to eat. It will then be moved from its existing circumstance to another, for bringing it to best state for being meat for the table. In the instance, the lamb will be sold, after first stage of the process, as a store lamb. It will have to endure transportation and likely too the stress of a sheep sale. It should be noted also that there can be ‘ewes with lambs at foot’ (ewes with lambs) sold at sheep sales.

It is a gladsome thing that some lambs do have a full life, in that they are not slaughtered in infancy. It is additionally gladsome if, as well as not having been slaughtered in infancy, lambs have not been made to suffer in other ways during their infancy. 

Lambs who are not slaughtered when young, are: those lambs which humans keep to give the lambs adulthood and entirety; those lambs which are kept to grow up to be adult sheep and to breed lambs; those lambs which humans keep to increase the number of sheep which they have. 

Sadly, for a quantity of lambs, they neither get to experience the full span of life, nor do they have much good or joyous existence as lambs.   

Deliberate Cruelty

Humans’ cruelty towards sheep can be unwitting or deliberate. Here, deliberate cruelty will be considered.

Deliberate cruelty represents humans knowing that their action or absence of action will bring suffering to sheep but doing it nonetheless. Despite awareness that sheep are live creatures and who feel - are sentient - the humans render the cruelty.   

Categories of deliberate cruelty range widely. 

There are those types which represent wrong, unkind, harmful, or else inadequate and insufficient, treatment of sheep during day-to-day sheep farming process and procedures. 

There are the types which represent putting, or leaving, sheep in such contexts as are recognised to be liable to render harm to the sheep, such as a war zone or an area of a natural disaster of some kind. Recent examples are Gaza and an area of Iceland. In Iceland, over 200 sheep had been ‘left to their fate by farmers after a volcanic eruption near the evacuated town of Grindavik (‘Rescuers in daring bid to save sheep trapped by Iceland volcano’, The Guardian, 16th January, 2024). All the sheep were rescued to safety ‘following two days without water and feed’ (Iceland Review website, 18th January 2024). 

Here is another type. It is portrayed in that dog owner who knows fully that dogs are natural predators of sheep, who completely appreciates that they should train their dogs to behave well, who is entirely aware that they need to constrain their dogs from going near sheep and worrying them, but who, nonetheless, lets their dogs worry sheep. 

Live exports of sheep is an activity type which has known potential - strong likelihood - to deliver circumstances of deliberate cruelty to sheep. Journeys are often long, space can be overcrowded, temperatures can be high. Recently, due to tensions in the Red Sea, M V Bahijah, a ship from Australia bound for Israel carrying around 14,000 sheep turned back, arriving in a summer heatwave and needing to wait off the coast of Australia before eventual disembarkation at port. The sheep were on the vessel for five and a half weeks in total (WAtoday, 13th February 2024).

A very direct type of deliberate cruelty to a sheep occurred in the UK in December of last year. At a village in Suffolk, ‘the sheep was killed by a club hammer and taken away with the hammer left on the footpath.’ (East Anglian Daily Times, 18th December 2023).  

Why does deliberate cruelty to sheep by a person or people group ever happen? Sheep are gentle, defenceless and non-aggressive creatures. They should only have the best and kindest of treatment. 

Unwitting Cruelty

Cruelty to sheep can be unwitting, in that the cruelty results from absence of questioning, comes from closed-mindedness, stems from ignorance. Or cruelty can be deliberate. Here, unwitting cruelty will be looked at.

Sheep farmers and their associates in the sheep farming industry, people who come into contact with sheep, the general populace – they all need to be cognisant of what constitutes cruelty towards sheep and to act towards sheep in accordance with that knowledge.

Unwitting cruelty to sheep derives from these among others:

seeing sheep as of no importance or value; 

regarding sheep as not worth treating well; 

perceiving sheep as items for humans’ use, and purpose (economic, usually); 

not realising or recognising that sheep are sentient, that they have feelings of pain, fear, stress etc;

staying with accepted practices in regards to sheep and not questioning those practices;

not keeping up-to-date on what represents cruelty towards sheep;

not checking sheep, and their needs, adequately and frequently enough;

failing to appreciate that sheep are prey animals (and so not ensuring that predators are constrained and are kept well away from sheep).

Examples of unwitting maltreatment of sheep are:

not giving them sufficient or appropriate care, sustenance and facilities, eg food and nutrition, fresh drinking water, a place of shelter, healthcare;

failing to take into account weather and climate conditions and outcomes; 

handling that is causing pain, harm, stress, fear;

putting them in environments, contexts, and circumstances that are ‘against their nature’ and preference.

Interesting to consider is the documentary film The Shepherds of Berneray (1981), made in 1978-79 by ethnographic filmmakers Jack Shea and Allen Moore from Harvard University. In it are displayed instances of what now would be seen as cruelty - sheep being hit, roped to each other via their horns, held by their horns, thrown from a boat to swim ashore, dropped into dip - sometimes upside down. Those who were doing these things to sheep in the film seem unwitting that they are treating the sheep cruelly. It could be that the humans did know that their treatment of the sheep was cruel; there is no indication that they did. 

Cruelty is cruelty, whether unwitting or deliberate. 

Entrenched Attitudes

In the activity of the sheep farming industry are displayed ‘we have always done it this way’ embedded attitudes. Change is necessary and overdue. 

Sheep farmers, as people working with living creatures requiring attention daily, have routines. The various elements comprising the ‘sheep farming year’ also have their place. And the year’s seasons impose what is to be done and how. So, there is both context and cause for the existence of an accepted approach in the activity of sheep farming. Additionally, farming of sheep is an endeavour usually happening in rural, quite remote, even isolated, places. Therefore, sheep farmers’ contact with a variety of people and viewpoints may not be huge. The general scene is provided for engendering attitudes in common to exist, and for leading to these to remain unaltered. 

The thought and manner of the sheep farming industry can lead to sheep being regarded as humans’ property and as items for humans’ use.

The attitude manifests outdated-ness. It is out of sync with latest, modern-world, thinking on animals and their welfare. That sheep are sentient is now recognised. Therefore, to ignore the recognition that sheep can feel, to treat them as if they are unfeeling objects, is unacceptable. For example, handling of sheep, in every situation, must be gentle, caring, considerate, respectful. 

On the part of sheep farmers and all those in the sheep industry, a change of thinking about sheep is required. Towards the required change, seeing sheep fundamentally differently is needed, then as an outcome of this, change and improvement of procedures is demanded.

Let us consider, more, and across the board, what is likely to be contributing to the formulation and maintenance of entrenched attitudes, and what needs to change.

Considering animal welfare laws, Gary Francione opines
‘… the law almost always defers to industry to set the standard of “humane” care. This deference is based on the assumption that those who produce animal products - from the breeders to the farmers to the slaughterhouse operators - are rational actors who will not impose more harm on animals than is required to produce the particular product, just as the rational owner of a car would not take a hammer to their car to dent it for no reason. We assume that whatever level of protection for animal interests that producers are providing is the level that is necessary to use animals for that purpose. The result is that the level of protection for animal interests is, with rare exceptions, set by the industry and is linked to what is required to exploit animals in an economically efficient way. And that allows for a standard of treatment that, if applied to humans, would clearly constitute torture.’
(Why Veganism Matters: The Moral Value of Animals, 2020, pp 31-32)

Sheep farmers and their associates such as auctioneers and their personnel, slaughter houses and their operatives, shearers, are working to cater to customers, humans. They form one sector of society in society as a whole. So, all humans need to change what they are demanding from sheep farmers and those others in the sheep farming industry. Moral philosopher Peter Singer, saying that habit ‘is the final barrier that the Animal Liberation movement faces’, continues thus:
‘Habits not only of diet but also of thought and language must be challenged and altered. Habits of thought lead us to brush aside descriptions of cruelty to animals as emotional, for “animal lovers only”; or if not that, then anyway the problem is so trivial in comparison to the problems of human beings that no sensible person could give it time and attention. This too is a prejudice…’. (Animal Liberation: Preface to the 1995 Edition)

Roanne Van Voorst considers ‘How can we live and eat in a way that does not exploit or wipe out other species?’. She says, ‘This thought experiment is difficult not only because it could mean we have to critically rethink our entire economic system but above all because it forces us to look at ourselves in a different way; to look at what a human is, and what a nonhuman animal is, and what animal rights could look like as a result, and how these differ from human rights, and the meaning of all these laws in relation to one another in an age in which humans have long since stopped behaving humanely.’ (Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals: The Future of Food, 2021), p 213. 

It can be seen that is not just sheep farmers and the entire sheep farming industry who need to review their attitudes to sheep. All of us need to open our minds and lose traditional perspectives that are inappropriate and causing sheep harm and suffering.