PJ Harvey has infuriated animal rights campaigners after confessing she castrated farmyard lambs when she was growing up.
The British musician was raised in a rural area of south England and spent her childhood learning the family farm business. That meant learning how to remove the testicles of young sheep, using elastic bands.
In an interview with Mojo magazine, the singer/songwriter says, "That's what you do on a farm. You have to because you don't want every male lamb to turn into a ram. You only want the best looking lambs: the ones you think are going to be strong, and turn into good sires.
"The others, you have to conserve their energy to go into the meat. You don't want them expending their energy, wanting to mate... It's a very delicate operation: you need to hold the lamb in the right position, because it is painful for them.
"I didn't particularly like doing it, but if you work with animals, there are things you have to do which you don't like doing: you follow in your mother and father's footsteps."
The admission has upset officials at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who have slammed the practice. A PETA spokeswoman tells WENN, "Castration with a rubber ring inflicts incredible pain on an animal, and is sadly just one of a range of mutilations that animals raised for their flesh are subjected to... If anyone abused dogs or cats in the same manner, they'd be locked up."
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