|
You Can
Help!
If you don’t like what you see here, you’re
in good company. Every year, millions of people turn away from wearing
animal skins by refusing to purchase products made from them. For animals’
sake, please, don’t buy wool.
There are fashionable, durable, and
warm alternatives to wool available virtually everywhere that clothes are
sold. Click here to view PETA’s “Shopping Guide to Compassionate
Clothing.”
Featured Actions
- Write
to your local newspaper to educate readers about the cruelty endured by
animals raised for wool.
- Leaflet at local shopping centers
or other places where wool is sold. Click here to view or order our “What’s Wrong With
Wool?” leaflet. Before leafleting at a business that sells wool, try
taking copies of our leaflet and video to the store manager, and ask that some or all of
the company’s wool items be replaced with cruelty-free fabrics.
- Create a display for your local or
public library to inform people about the cruelty of wool production and
to encourage them to purchase only alternatives to wool. We can provide you with any of the resources that you’ll need.
- Click here to Urge the Australian Veterinary Association to
Condemn Cruel Live-Export Trade.
To get involved in any of these
actions, contact Matt Rice at MattR@peta.org.
- Join PETA’s Activist
Network
- Join
PETA’s Asia-Pacific's Australian Activist Network
FAQ at PETA.org
"Why is PETA boycotting the Australian wool
industry?"
PETA launched a boycott of the Australian
wool industry after a year of appeals to the Australian government yielded
no result. Our goal is to pressure the wool industry and government to ban
two extremely cruel practices in Australian sheep farming: mulesing and
live export. PETA urges everyone to boycott Australian wool until these
practices are ended. Already, retail giant Abercrombie & Fitch has
signed onto PETA’s boycott by agreeing not to use Australian wool in its
garments until mulesing and live export are banned, and retailers J.Crew
and U.K.-based New Look have given assurances that they do not use wool
from mutilated lambs or sheep who have been exported alive.
"Why does PETA oppose
mulesing?"
Mulesing is a gruesome procedure in which
farmers flip lambs onto their backs, restrain them between metal bars, and
use gardening shears to cut huge chunks of flesh from their rumps without
any painkillers whatsoever. Mulesing is a cheap, crude attempt to create
smooth, scarred skin that is resistant to blowfly maggots which can eat
sheep alive. However, the enormous, bloody wounds can attract the very
flies the procedure is supposed to repel, and lambs sometimes get
flystrike before they even heal from the traumatic ordeal.
Humane
alternatives are available now. They include breeding for less wrinkly
skin on the hindquarters (a bare breech), increased monitoring of sheep,
and blowfly control. These alternatives are already in use by as many as
20 percent of Australian sheep farmers, so there is no excuse to continue
to mutilate lambs even one day longer.
"Why does PETA oppose live
export?"
Millions of sheep discarded by the
Australian wool industry are shipped to the Middle East for slaughter
every year. They are packed onto enormous, multitiered ships where severe
overcrowding causes many to be trampled to death or to starve when they
cannot reach food and water troughs. Treated as mere cargo, sick or
injured sheep may be thrown overboard to drown or be eaten by sharks or
tossed alive into shipboard grinders. Those who survive the grueling
weeks- or months-long voyage in filthy, disease-ridden conditions have
their throats slit without being stunned first.
Live export is
completely unnecessary. Australia has the facilities and the workers to
conduct its own halal slaughter and could easily ship chilled or frozen
meat to the Middle East instead of live animals.
"Don’t Muslim consumers require live
animals so that they can be assured they are killed in the halal
manner?"
Australia has its own in-country, certified
halal slaughterhouses, with all slaughter methods approved and supervised
by Muslims who are licensed by the importing countries. The animals can be
slaughtered in Australia, and the carcasses exported, without violating
any religious custom. Islamic religious leaders in Australia have approved
the electrical stunning of sheep prior to throat-cutting, making slaughter
in Australia far more humane than live export.
"Are all sheep who are raised for wool
killed?"
Sheep are inevitably sent to slaughter when
they are no longer wanted by farmers—if they don’t die of exposure or
neglect first.
"What is merino wool?"
The word “merino” refers to the merino breed
of sheep, who are the most commonly raised sheep in Australia and whose
wool is used to make clothing. Merino sheep are specifically bred to have
wrinkly skin, desirable to farmers because, theoretically, the wrinkly
skin produces more wool, but those wrinkles also trap moisture, urine, and
feces, making sheep susceptible to blowfly infestation. Lately, other
merino sheep, who have smoother skin, are resistant to blowfly attack, and
produce ultra-fine wool, have come on the scene.
"Is it OK to buy wool that isn’t from
Australia?"
It’s extremely hard to tell where a wool
product originated. Most wool products, clothing especially, are routed
through China (where labor is cheap and health and environmental standards
are low) or Italy before being exported as a final product. This means
that the wool in a garment labeled “made in China” or “made in Italy” has
likely come from sheep raised in Australia, the country that produces
roughly 30 percent of the world’s wool. The only way to be certain that
you are avoiding wool from sheep raised in Australia is to avoid wool
altogether, but avoiding merino wool is a great step in the right
direction.
"What about the customs, traditions, and
jobs that depend on wool?"
We do not believe that jobs will be
negatively affected by an end to mulesing and live exports. As for
tradition, that’s never an excuse for cruelty. This same argument was used
against abolitionists in the U.S. to justify slavery. The abolition of
slavery, the invention of the automobile, and the end of World War II all
necessitated job retraining and restructuring. This is simply an element
of all social progress—not a reason to deter it.
In Australia, a
2000 report by the Heilbron Pty. Ltd. found that the live-sheep export
industry directly competes in the same Middle East market with Australian
chilled or frozen sheep meat products. The Heilbron report also concludes
that if the sheep and cattle exported live in 1999 and 2000 had been
processed in Australia, approximately $1.5 billion would have been added
to Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP), creating $250 million more in
household income and around 10,500 full-time jobs.
"Isn’t wool the warmest ‘fabric’
available?"
Not only are there fabrics available that
are warmer, such as polyfibers, acrylics, cotton blends, rayon, and
polyester, but wool products also tend to be harder to care for, heavier,
prone to shrinking, and not as durable.
"But I’m not personally abusing the sheep,
so why should I boycott wool?"
You may not be holding the shears or forcing
the sheep onto ships yourself, but when you purchase products made from
animals, you are paying someone else to do the dirty work for you. Each of
us has the opportunity to choose compassion over cruelty when we buy
clothes, blankets, and other products. Most clothing stores carry a wide
variety of nonwool items. Click here to
find out where you can buy wonderful alternatives to wool.
|