Many people think there's nothing wrong with wool—sheep are lovingly shorn of their excess fleece on small, picturesque farms, right?
Wrong.
No amount of fluff can hide the fact that buying wool supports a surprisingly cruel and bloody industry, in which sheep suffer while they're alive and die a horrifying death.
PETA's investigations of the wool industry in Australia—where much of the world's wool is produced-have exposed horrific cruelty to animals. We have found helpless lambs who had flesh deliberately cut off their rumps—without anything at all to numb the pain. Despite the wool industry's ads depicting cuddly sheep, this barbaric practice—called mulesing—is routine.
It's not only cruel, it's pointless too. Mulesing is intended to stop maggots from infesting the sheep's wrinkled skin, yet there are readily available and humane alternatives to this crude and painful practice. Neither the Australian government nor industry leaders care to stop mulesing or other cruel abuses inflicted on sheep.
PETA's unique international campaign to protect these abused lambs and sheep is gaining ground. Dozens of leading designers and retailers—including Marc Bouwer, Stella McCartney, Abercrombie & Fitch, H&M, and Limited Brands—have joined our campaign. All have pledged not to use or sell mulesed Australian wool until this cruel practice is stopped.
It gets worse! When sheep stop producing high volumes of wool, they are often shipped to Middle Eastern slaughterhouses. They are sent on long ocean voyages in all weather extremes in often disease-ridden boats.
Lambs born on the ships can be trampled and killed. Some are exposed to the elements, and unable to escape their own waste, many sheep become sick or injured or die. Still others starve to death, as they do not recognize the feed or reach the troughs.
When they finally arrive at the slaughterhouse, sheep are dragged, thrown, and kicked before having their throats slit. At one slaughterhouse in Amman, Jordan, the video documentation our investigators gathered contained stomach-churning footage. You can watch it on our Web site, but please note that the footage is very upsetting.
Source: http://www.peta.org/
