Have you ever wondered what’s wrong with wearing wool (besides the fact that it’s as itchy as hell)? Well, wonder no more. Here’s everything that you need to know about where wool comes from and how it’s made with 100 percent cruelty.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IMAGES ARE GRAPHIC (NSFW) AND WILL MAKE YOU REFUSE TO WEAR WOOL EVER AGAIN.
1. About 25 percent of the world’s wool comes from Australia.
2. Young lambs’ ears are often hole-punched, their tails are chopped off, and the males are castrated—all usually without anesthetics or pain relief.
3. It is considered “normal” in the Australian wool industry for approximately 3 million young lambs to die every spring.
4. Lambs sometimes die because of poor nutrition.
5. This wound is the result of a process called “mulesing,” and it’s standard practice in the industry.
6. During “mulesing,” workers cut huge chunks of skin and flesh from the backs of lambs’ legs and around their tails.
7. In the industry’s rush to produce more wool, many sheep die from exposure after premature shearing.
8. An unnatural overload of wool also causes animals to die of heat exhaustion during hot months.
9. During shearing, sheep can sustain anything from nicks to complete amputations of their udders, ears, penises, and other body parts.
10. Eyewitness: “I have seen shearers punch sheep with their shears or their fists until the sheep’s nose bled. I have seen sheep with half their faces shorn off.”
11. Sheep are crammed into crowded pens, and some may die because of injuries or stress.
12. When sheep age and their wool production declines, they are sent to slaughter.
13. Millions of live sheep are shipped from Australia to the Middle East and North Africa every year.
14. A 2005 report stated that about 38,000 sheep died in transit. In most cases, their carcasses were thrown overboard.
15. In New Zealand, methane emissions from enteric fermentation, coming mostly from sheep, make up more than 90 percent of the nation’s greenhouse-gas emissions.
Convinced yet? We hope so. Want to know how you can help? Listen up: Please NEVER support an industry that treats sheep as disposable objects and not as the smart, sensitive, dignified animals they are.