The US-based group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has campaigned for years against mulesing – the Australian practice of cutting a slice of flesh from a sheep's rump to prevent the animal dying of flystrike.

PETA's efforts have seen major fashion companies such as Adidas, Hugo Boss, Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria's Secret shun the Australian product and some foreign retailers refuse to sell clothing made with wool from Down Under.

Sydney's Daily Telegraph tabloid has launched a campaign to counteract PETA's claims, telling the group to back off from farmers who are already struggling against the worst drought in a century.

Fashion designer Jayson Brunson said the PETA campaign was misguided because the industry had already agreed to ban mulesing by 2010 and the boycotts were bringing unnecessary pain to farmers.

"The farmers have been going through enough hell with the drought, which has been going on forever, without having to cop all of this kind of flak," he told AFP.

"Everybody wants mulesing phased out, nobody wants to hurt the sheep," Brunson said.

"But it's a renewable, sustainable, biodegradable fibre which is one of the best things in the world. You don't kill the animals. It's not like fur. It's not even like leather. It's very humane."

Brunson said fashion designers and farmers were sympathetic towards PETA but that mulesing was so far the only way to prevent the sheep from dying from "a very horrible death."

Some 11.5 percent of Australian wool growers have already ceased mulesing, which prevents flies from embedding in wool near the sheep's backside and laying maggots which eventually eat the animal's flesh.

But Agriculture Minister Tony Burke said if the painful practice was ceased immediately, there would be an immediate rise in the number of sheep dying from flystrike.

"A boycott is a punishing blow for our farmers who have done nothing wrong – in the middle of our country's toughest drought," he told the Daily Telegraph.

Chairman of the Australian Wool and Sheep Industry Taskforce Don Hamblin said farmers were suffering from the PETA-led boycotts, almost four years after the industry decided to stamp out the practice.

"With four years of almost non-stop drought, and high fodder prices for feeding lifestock, some of our producers question their long-term future in the industry," Hamblin told AFP.

The industry, which says farmers must carry out mulesings because the dense wool of merino sheep combined with abundant flies and hot weather makes sheep here uniquely vulnerable to flystrike, is developing other options to mulesing.

Among them are genetic modifications to breed sheep with greater resistance to flystrike; drug use, and placing a tight clip on the animal's rump so that the flesh is cut off from blood supply and eventually dies and falls off.

PETA has described the industry response as inadequate and argues that clipping is as painful a mutilation as mulesing.

"International clothing retailers won't accept this bait-and-switch tactic and will demand that their wool come from lambs who haven't been mulesed using either shears or clips," PETA president Ingrid E. Newkirk said in a letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in March.

Australia is a major global wool producer, with the industry worth about 2.09 billion dollars (1.98 billion US) annually.

Photo: Don Arnold/WireImage.com

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